The thing about my way of teaching stats is that my cool, novel examples get old really fast. Like, pop culture is on a thirty-day cycle. Anyway, YEARS ago, 2014 to be exact, I blogged about illustrating bimodal data distributions using baby name data from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, when an older name comes back into vogue, it has a bimodal distribution when you plot time on the X axis. I stand by this example. However, all of the data illustrations come from 2014. When our traditionally aged college students were 6 or 7. Which makes this example feel a little stale. However, here is some data, courtesy of Redditor fevaah , showing old names that are back in vogue through 2025 ! And Eleanor, Violet, Nora, and Hazel are here, illustrating bimodal distributions for a new generation. If you used my old baby-name data, this is a quick, easy refresh for your lectures (or a fun new addition if you didn't). If this idea was help...
Today, I'm taking a break from blogging about college teaching and sharing a mini-lesson I created for elementary school-aged students. I am sharing my activity here because I bet I'm not the only college instructor who has been asked to do community outreach with kids, be it at local STEM festivals, children's museums, or elementary school career exploration days. Feel free to take this idea and run with it. I taught this lesson as part of the Wonder Time series at my local children's museum, Erie Children's Museum in Erie, PA. My friend, Claire, is a former stats student and former STEM teacher at my kids' school. She is the current education director at the museum. PS: I love my small town life, and the museum is just a few blocks from my workplace. A description of the Wonder Time series My question was, "How do number experts predict the future?" As I put together my lesson, I was inspired by all the different ways instructors are already usin...