9% of Americans think they could beat a crocodile in a fight. What?

https://today.yougov.com/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2021/05/13/lions-and-tigers-and-bears-what-animal-would-win-f

Sorry that I haven't been posting as often lately. You would think that with the summer, I would have more flexibility, but I am working hard on some writing deadlines (for a stats textbook!), and my kids' activities have picked up considerably with soccer season starting.

This example illustrates fun data visualizations as well as a t-test.

YouGov is a polling company, sort of like Gallup. They collect many Very Serious polls and silly polls like this one, where they asked participants to state whether or not they could beat 34 different animals (from rats to grizzly bears) in an unarmed fight. Their graphic designer deserves a raise for this bar graph, including several tragic humans vs. animal memes/movie clips.

Here are a few lessons you can draw out of this funny data.

Paired t-test example: They took the participants identified as men and women and graphed out the data. Which is sort of fascinating. There is a good 6-8% of women who I wouldn't cross. I, personally, don't think they could beat a grizzly bear, lion, elephant, gorilla, and crocodile in a fight, but THEY think they could. I bet they do Cross-Fit.

Anyway, this data also serves as a very significant paired t-test. Here is the data.

Even silly studies need a method section! When we teach, we need to show our students good and proper methods sections, but this funny one would be a great introduction to APA sections. I find that the memorable examples tend to stick better.

Weighted vs. Unweighted polling data: YouGov also shared a paper report of the data, which you may find a use for in class. It mentions weighted and unweighted totals, which you could use to open up a discussion about polling techniques that help ensure representativeness.

A table for the rat data from YouGov, found here: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/07vgk5e81j/YouGov%20-%20Human%20vs%20animal%20fight.pdf

Comments

Ways to use funny meme scales in your stats classes

Have you ever heard of the theory that there are multiple people worldwide thinking about the same novel thing at the same time? It is the multiple discovery hypothesis of invention . Like, multiple great minds around the world were working on calculus at the same time. Well, I think a bunch of super-duper psychology professors were all thinking about scale memes and pedagogy at the same time. Clearly, this is just as impressive as calculus. Who were some of these great minds? 1) Dr. Molly Metz maintains a curated list of hilarious "How you doing?" scales. 2) Dr. Esther Lindenström posted about using these scales as student check-ins. 3) I was working on a blog post about using such scales to teach the basics of variables. So, I decided to create a post about three ways to use these scales in your stats classes: 1) Teaching the basics of variables. 2) Nominal vs. ordinal scales. 3) Daily check-in with your students. 1. Teach your students the basics...

Leo DiCaprio Romantic Age Gap Data: UPDATE

Does anyone else teach correlation and regression together at the end of the semester? Here is a treat for you: Updated data on Leonardo DiCaprio, his age, and his romantic partner's age when they started dating. A few years ago, there was a dust-up when a clever Redditor r/TrustLittleBrother realized that DiCaprio had never dated anyone over 25. I blogged about this when it happened. But the old data was from 2022. Inspired by this sleuthing, I created a wee data set, including up-to-date information on his current relationship with Vittoria Ceretti, so your students can suss out the patterns that exist in this data.

If your students get the joke, they get statistics.

Gleaned from multiple sources (FB, Pinterest, Twitter, none of these belong to me, etc.). Remember, if your students can explain why a stats funny is funny, they are demonstrating statistical knowledge. I like to ask students to explain the humor in such examples for extra credit points (see below for an example from my FA14 final exam). Using xkcd.com for bonus points/assessing if students understand that correlation =/= causation What are the numerical thresholds for probability? How does this refer to alpha? What type of error is being described, Type I or Type II? What measure of central tendency is being described? Dilbert: http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Kill%20Anyone Sampling, CLT http://foulmouthedbaker.com/2013/10/03/graphs-belong-on-cakes/ Because control vs. sample, standard deviations, normal curves. Also,"skewed" pun. If you go to the original website , the story behind this cakes has to do w...

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