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...
My dad is retired Air Force and my baby brother has been in the USAF for over 20 years. Growing up, my dad used to talk about all of the services the USAF provides to our country and the world. It employs many musicians , advances airplane safety for civilians, and conducts and sponsors numerous research projects . This post will focus on the USAF's unique position to advance weather and climate science through data collection in large, specialized aircraft that can fly through hurricanes. Weather forecasting requires data. As reported by Debbie Elliot for NPR , the Air Force collects data that, specifically, will help us better predict severe weather and save lives. Aside: This whole mission started on a bet: HOW TO USE IN CLASS: -I tell my students repeatedly that I'm not trying to turn them into the world's best statisticians. I'm trying to help them learn how to be themselves, with their interests and abilities, but fluent in statistical lite...