Tyler Vigen has has created  a long list of easy-to-paste-into-a-powerpoint graphs that illustrate that correlation does not equal causation. For instance, while per capita consumption of cheese and number of people who die by become tangled in their bed sheets may have a strong relationship (r = 0.947091), no one is saying that cheese consumption leads to bed sheet-related death. Although, you could pose The Third Variable question to your students for some of these relationships). Property of Tyler Vigens, http://i.imgur.com/OfQYQW8.png Vigen has also provided a menu of frequently used variables (deaths by tripping, sunlight by state) to help you look for specific examples. This portion is interactive, as you and your students can generate your own graphs. Below, I generated a graph of marriage rates in Pennsylvania and consumption of high fructose corn syrup. Generated at http://www.tylervigen.com/

Jess Hagy illustrates her observations about life using simple graphs . I use her illustrations in order to provide examples to my students. Does this illustrate a positive or negative correlation? Property of Jess Hagy Would a correlation detect this relationship? Why or why not?  Property of Jess Hagy According to this diagram, what two different factors may account for the shared variance between the two variables?  Property of Jess Hagy

Gone fishing... property of xkcd.com

While not a statsy blog, H and a H is HILARIOUS ( esp. this blog about dogs and moving . I moved across town and my house broken dog promptly peed all over the house...can't imagine a cross-country move!). However, the entry " Boyfriend doesn't have Ebola. Probably " IS psychometric-y and hilarious. It critiques the FACES pain scale often used in hospitals. NOTE: I absolutely don't own the images below, they belong to Hyperbole and a Half. Property of Hyperbole and a Half The language is NSFW but who gives a fuck about that (see what I did there?). I use this as a discussion board prompt in my online statistics class (which is tailored to professionals seeking their BS in nursing) and those students seem to relate to this posting in terms of their professional life but non-BSN students have been exposed to this scale via trips to the doctor and can discuss its utility, come up with examples when a non-verbal scale is particularly useful, ways to improve ...