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...
Stuart Ritchie wrote an excellent book about the problems (and solutions to those problems) in science called Science Fictions . Illustrator and author Zach Weinersmith summarized and illustrated those problems in science in the form of a short webcomic . Both the book and the comic are great and have a home somewhere in your psychology curriculum. The comic is a quick, digestible primer on the problems with science. Meanwhile, the book goes into great depth, including many of the problems related directly to p-hacking, fishing expeditions, etc. For more, read Stuart's book, Science Fictions. Aside: I am American, and he is Scottish and reads the audiobook version to me while I walk my dog, and it is soothing. I'm creating a one-credit course for our Honors program based on this book. Also, follow Stuart and Zach on The Bird App.