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...
I think it is important to emphasize how regression can be used to make future predictions using trends in existing data. Most psychology books use psychology examples to illustrate this, which makes sense. Still, I think explaining how regression is widely used in business to make financial decisions, and predictions is important. But that can be boring. But I found one example that uses the Marvel Comic Universe to do this. I already blogged about this , but I'm sharing exactly how I used this in class presently. ASIDE: This data is being regularly updated! Here is a Google Drive folder with 1) my version of the data (CSV and I turned all the percentages to decimal points for JASP) and 2) my PPT . Which includes photos of the scientists of the MCU. ALSO: While your students are doing their exercise, totes play the soundtrack from Guardians of the Galaxy. Do it.