I teach with JASP.  Compared to, say, SPSS, JASP doesn't drain my computer of its processing abilities. But it takes more than a Chromebook to run. And I know that many of my Psych Stats colleagues are teaching with SPSS, which takes way more than a Chromebook to run.  This is troublesome because some of our students have Chromebooks. Or second-hand laptops or very inexpensive laptops that fit their budget and run Word just fine but leave some of our students at a disadvantage regarding their ability to succeed in classes that require more than Word. I bet many of these students are financially responsible for themselves and operating on a limited budget. So let's help those students. I learned about a workaround for this problem from one of the ITS employees at Gannon University. A workaround that may be obvious to some of you but I never knew about. It helped one of my students who had a crap top AND (at the time) a concussion, and she was struggling to keep up with wo...

Create an account with Pew Research, and you can download some of their data sets, including a) syntax files, b) detailed methodology, and c) codebook, including detailed screenshots of what the survey felt like to participants.  I think there are three ways to use this in class: -Show your students what proper data documentation looks like -Get some data, run some analyses -Get some data, look up Pew's reports based on the data, see if you can replicate the findings. How to Properly Document Your Research Process. Pew documents the hell out of these data sets. Included are: Syntax files: Methodology: Surveys, featuring the questions but also screenshots of the user experience: Get some data, run some analyses. MY FIRST EVER FACTOR ANALYSIS EXAMPLE, y'all. Per the methodology documentation, Pew creates its own scales. Within this data set (American Trends Panel Wave 34), they use several scales to measuring attitudes about medical treatments. ...

Passion-Driven Statistics is a grant-funded, FREE resource that teaches the basic of statistics, including the basics of all of the stuff you need to know to conduct good research (data management, literature review, etc.). It bills itself as "project-driven" and is super, duper applied, which is an approach I love. You can download the whole stinking book  or view it online. And the PDF is concise and short, given the amount of material it covers. Why so short? Because it is lousy with links to Youtube videos, mini-assignments, instructions for reporting different statistical tests, etc.  I also love this resource because it contains a lot of good information for novices that I haven't seen packaged this way or in one place: Important lessons pertaining to the research process and data collection: The book is written to take you through a research project, and includes guidance for performing a literature review, writing a sound codebook, data management, etc. ...

This blog posting by Dr. Randy McCarthy discusses best practices in organizing/naming conventions for data files. These suggestions are probably more applicable to teaching graduate students than undergraduates. They are also the sorts of tips and tricks we use in practice but rarely teach in the classroom (but maybe we should). Included in Randy's recommendations: 1) Maintain consistent naming conventions for frequently used variables (like scale items or compiled scales that you use over and over again in your research). Then create and run the same syntax for this data for the rest of your scholarly career. If you are very, very consistent in the scales you use and the data analyses your run, you can save yourself time by showing a little forethought. 2) Keep and guard a raw version of all data sets. 3) Annotate your syntax. I would change that to HEAVILY annotate your syntax. I even put the dates upon which I write code so I can follow my own logic if I have to let a d...

This resource from UCLA is , essentially, a decision making tree for determining what kind of statistical analysis is appropriate based upon your data (see below). Screen shot from "What statistical analysis should I use?" Now, such decision making trees are available in many statistics text book...however... what makes this special is the fact that with each test comes code/syntax as well as output for SAS, Stata, SPSS, and R. Which is helpful to our students (and, let's be honest, us instructors/researchers as well).

When I look at the analytic data for my blog, I notice a lot of people come here after Googling "stats memes" or "math memes" or "statistics humor". Being a data-driven sort of human, I have posted my collection of memes inspired by teaching Introduction to Statistics using SPSS. They do reflect common mistakes/stumbling blocks that I see semester after semester. I think they draw student attention towards commonly-made mistakes in a way that is not threatening. And it puts me one step closer to my ultimate goal of teaching statistics using nothing but memes and animated .GIFS  Make your own via http://memegenerator.net/ . If they are hilarious and statsy, please consider sharing them with me. UPDATE: 11/25/16