Generate highly personalized music data using Exportify

Spotify generates gobs of data about music.

Most people have seen the end-of-the-year data Spotify generates for each user about their listening patterns. Most people don't know that Spotify also generates a lot of data about individual songs. Some of it is straightforward: tempo, genre, length. However, Spotify also has its own niche way of quantifying songs: Danceability. Accousticness. Here is a whole list of their variables and descriptions from researchers at CMU: https://www.stat.cmu.edu/capstoneresearch/315files_s23/team23.html

What does this mean for a stats teacher? You have access to highly personalizable data sets, rooted in music, with gobs and gobs of variables for each song...or artist...or album...or year of release...or genre (like, so many ways to divide up your data).

For instance, I created a data set with Spotify data for 1989 and 1989 (Taylor's Version) to teach paired t-tests. How do Taylor's re-recordings compare to the originals?

This data is freely available for download. If you are fancy, you can negotiate their API all by yourself. If you aren't fancy (I'm not fancy), you can use Exportify to get at this data.

https://exportify.net/#playlists

Exportify, in a nutshell:

Create playlists on Spotify (I have a free account, and it still works). Connect Exportify with your Spotify account. Download CSVs that have ALL of the data about each song on your playlist. Analyze. I teach intro stats and have already used this to teach t-tests and I am working on a way to use it to teach ANOVA. I bet you could also use this data to teach far more complicated data (multiple IVs, multiple DVs, repeated measures over time) analysis.

How can you use this in class?

Pick your own artist. Have your students pick the artist!

Which artist's sounds have changed the most if you compare their first album to their most recent album?

Which K-pop groups differ from one another, and how?

Which artists have the most variability on a single album?

What about soundtracks for horror movies versus romances? What about the top ten songs from 2003 versus 2023?

Not only are there endless questions, but I imagine you could come up with data for any kind of test you would ever want your stats babies to learn.

PS: Hey! If you like this idea and would love a whole stats textbook from the brain of the person who came up with this idea, sign up for more information about my forthcoming book here: https://seagull.wwnorton.com/l/710463/2023-10-26/2tp3nt

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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