Prior to the 2012 presidential election, Pennsylvania attempted to enact one of the toughest voter ID laws in the nation. This law has been kicked up to the courts to examine its legality. One reason that so many people protested the law was because it would make it more difficult for the elderly and the poor to vote (as it would be more difficult for them to obtain the ID required). Here is an NPR story that gives a bit of background on the law and the case in court.   Also, for giggles and grins, here is Jon Stewart's more amusing explanation of the law and why it was struck down prior to the election, including video footage of a PA legislature flat-out stating that the Voter ID law would allow Romney to win the 2012 election. In order to support/raise questions about the impact of the law on the ability to vote, statisticians have been brought in on both sides in order to estimate exactly how disenfranchising this law will be. Essentially, the debate in court centers a...

Gerd "I love heuristics" Gigernezer talking about the misinterpretation of research by the medi a (in particular, misinterpretation of data about oral contraceptives leads to increases in abortions). He argues that such misinterpretation isn't just bad reporting, but unethical.

Hey, nerds. Some big, big nerds generated a bunch of statistical graphs and analyses using content analysis data gleaned from the Tolkien's novels. Teach your students about nerdy, nerdy correlations: Content analysis for positive and negative affect:

If you aren't familiar with cracked.com, it is a website that composes lists. Some are pretty amusing ( 6 Myths About Psychology That Everyone (Wrongly) Believes ,  6 Things Your Body Does Every Day That Science Can't Explain ). An d some are even educational, like "The five most popular ways statistics are used to lie to you" . from cracked.com The list contains good points to encourage critical thinking in your students. Some of the specific points it touches upon: 1) When it is more appropriate to use median than mean. 2) False positives 3) Absolute versus relative changes in amount 4) Probability 5) Correlation does not equal causation And you'll get mad street cred points from undergraduates for using a Cracked list. Trust me.

One way of teaching about margin of error/confidence intervals is via political polling data. From  mvbarer.blogspot.com Here is a good site that has a break down of polling data taken in September 2012 for the 2012 US presidential election. I like this example because it draws on data from several well-reputed polling sites, includes their point estimates of the mean and their margin of errors. This allows for several good examples: a) the point estimates for the various polling organization all differ slightly (illustrating sampling error), b) the margin of errors  are provided, and c) it can be used to demonstrate how CIs can overlap, hence, muddying our ability to predict outcomes from point estimates of the mean. I tend to follow the previous example with this gorgeous polling data from Mullenberg College : This is how sampling is done, son! While stats teachers frequently discuss error reduction via big n , Mullenberg takes it a step further by o...

I originally came across this story via io9.com . More information from the source is available here . Essential, these high-end German shoes are made by a company of devoted atheists. They even have their mailing materials branded with "atheist". And they had a problem with their packages being lost in by the USPS. They ran a wee experiment in which they sent out packages that were labeled with the Atheist tape vs. not, and found that the Atheist packages went missing at a statistically higher rate than the non-denominational packages. I think this could be used in the classroom because it is a pretty straight-forward research design, you can challenge your students to question the research design, simply challenge your students to read through the discussion of this article at the atheistberlin website, introduce your students to Milgram's "lost letter" technique and other novel research methods. Edit: 3/9/2020 If you want to delve further into...

How to lie with accurate data...note how Fox News used a "creative' graph in order to make an 8.6% unemployment rate look like a 9% unemployment rate. Full story available at Media Matters (which, admittedly, is very left-leaning). From Media Matters

Colorful title aside,  this article  teaches critical thinking when analyzing scientific writing for validity and reliability. Property of io9.com As a Social Psychologist, I'm especially grateful that they covered the "Study of Duh" criticism. It also adresses the difference between bad science and bad journalism and why one needs to see the source material for research before they are in a position to truly evaluate a study.

I use this when introducing the availability heuristic in Intro and Social (good ol' comparison of fatal airline accidents vs. fatal car crashes), but I think it could also be used in a statistics class. For starters, it is a novel way of illustrating data. Second, you could use it to spark a discussion on the importance of data-driven decision making when it comes to public policy/charitable giving. For instance, breast cancer has really good PR, but more women are dying of cardiovascular disease...where should the NSF concentrate its efforts to make the biggest possible impact? Property of Newsweek More of same from Curiosity.com... curiosity.com  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bur_W0hCMAAOidE.png

Jorge Cham of PhD Comics quickly summarizes the problems that can occur as research is translated to the masses via the media. Funny AND touches on CI, sampling, psychometrics, etc. Property of phdcomics.com

Words can be powerful and value-laden. This can have an impact upon survey responses, as it did for this survey about attitudes towards gays serving in the military. This survey was taken in 2010, and gays can now openly serve in the military, but I still think this example is still a powerful way of teaching the weight of words when creating surveys. property of cbs.com I tend to use this as an extra credit, asking my students to respond to two questions:

I decided that I shouldn't limit my Hunks of Statistics list to man-hunks. There are some lady-hunks as well. Like Sharon Begley. Sharon Begley, from thedailybeast.com

I like to use this comic for extra credit points on the big Sampling Distribution of the Mean/Central Limit Theorem statistics exams. Property of Scott Adams Typically, I ask my students to identify the flaw in Dogbert's data collection technique, and the student reply with some variation of 1) sample size and 2) the data can not be provided by anyone who has been killed. I did have one smart ass reply, "Dogs can't talk". I gave him the extra credit points. 

Seems appropriate. I like football, but I LOVE data. For a better look in case you don't have bionic eyes or a magnifying glass next to your screen, check out CNN for the original graphics.  Given the trends within the points spread, it looks like the games are becoming more competitive over time. And the linebackers are getting scarier over time.