ASIDE: THIS IS MY 500th POST. PLEASE CLAP. Efficacy data about a mental health intervention? Yes, please. The example has so much potential in a psych stats classroom. Or an abnormal/clinical classroom, or research methods. Maybe even human factors, because three numbers are easy to remember than 10? This post was inspired by an NPR story  by Rhitu Chatterjee. It is all about America's mental health emergency hotline's switch from a 10-digit phone number to the much easier-to-remember three digits (988), and the various ways that the government has measured the success of this change. How to use this (and related material) in class: 1) Assessment. In the NPR interview, the describe how several markers have improved: Wait times, dropped calls, etc.  Okay, so the NPR story sent me down a rabbit hole of looking for this data so we can use it in class. Here is the federal government's website about  988  and a link to their specific  988  performance data,...

I love dragging on bad science reporting as much as anyone, but I must give All Of The Credit to the Washington Post and its excellent, data-centered reporting on the opioid epidemic . It is a thing of beauty. How to use in class: 1) Broadly, this is a fine example of using data to better understand applied problems, medical problems, drug problems, etc. 2) Specifically, this data can be personalized to your locale via WaPo's beautiful, functional website . 3) After you pull up you localized data, descriptive data abound...# of pills, who provided them, who wrote the scripts (y'all...Frontier Pharmacy is like two miles from my house)...   4) Everyone teaches about frequency tables, right? Here is a good example: 5) In addition to localizing this research via the WaPo website, you can also personalize your class by looking for local reporting that uses this data. For instance, the Erie newspaper reporter David Bruce reported on our local problem ( .pdf of the...

This article, written by Matt Daniels  for The Pudding , allows you to play around with a whole bunch of Spotify user data in order to generate visualizations of song popularity over time. You can generate custom visualizations using the very interactive sections on this website. For instance, there is a special visualization that allows you to finally quantify the Biggie/Tupac Rivalry. So, data and pop culture are my two favorite things. I could play with these different interactive pieces all day long. But there are also some specific ways you could use this in class. 1) Generate unique descriptive data for different musicians and then ask you students to create visualizations using the software of your choosing. Below, I've queried Dixie Chicks play data. Students could enter their own favorite artist. Note: They data only runs through 2005. 2) Sampling errors: Here is a description of the methodology used for this data: Is this representative of all data...

A pretty video featuring Billy Barr, a gentleman that has been recording weather day in his corner of Gothic, Colorado for the last 40 years.  Billy Barr This brief video highlights his work. And his data provides evidence of climate change. I like this video because it shows how ANYONE can be a statistician, as long as... They use consistent data collection tools... They are fastidious in their data entry techniques... They are passionate about their research. Who wouldn't be passionate about Colorado?

The Southern Poverty Law Center has used mapping software in order to illustrate the location of different hate groups in the US. How to use in class: I think this demonstrates how good old descriptive data collection plays a valuable roll in law enforcement, social justice, etc. I think this demonstrates why well-visualized data may be a more compelling way of sharing information than data in tables. Another way to use this is for your students to create a methods section based upon the data collection information provided on the website: You can make the data more personalized for your class by digging down to state-wide data. In addition to the maps, the website includes various other descriptive data quantifying different hate groups in the US. I used this in class along with  other examples of how data can be mixed with maps in order to provide information on regions/states. This could also be used in a Social Psychology class in order to illustrat...

C ollin gleaned some archival data about ER visits in America from US Consumer Product Safety Commission. For each ER visit, there is a brief description of the reason for the visit. Collin queried punching related injuries. See his Method section below describes how he set the parameters for his operationalized variable. With a bit of explaining, you could also describe how Collin took qualitative data (the written description of the injury) and converted it into quantitative data: http://qz.com/582720/americas-most-prolific-wall-punchers-charted/ Then he made some charts. The age of wall punchers is right-skewed. And probably could be used in a Developmental Psychology class to illustrate poor judgment in adolescents as well as the emergence of the prefrontal cortex/executive thinking skills in one's early 20s. http://qz.com/582720/americas-most-prolific-wall-punchers-charted/ The author looked at wall punching by month of the year and uncovered a fairly uniform d...

Data USA draws upon various federal data sources in order to generate visualizations about cities and occupations in the US. And it provides lots of good examples of simple, descriptive statistics and data visualizations. This website is highly interactive and you can query information about any municipality in the US. This creates relevant, customized examples for your class. You can present examples of descriptive statistics using the town or city in which your college/university/high school is located or you could encourage students to look up their own hometowns. Data provided includes job trends, crime, health care, commuting times, car ownership rates...in short, all sorts of data. Below I have included some screen shots for data about Erie, PA, home of Gannon University: The background photo here is from the Presque Isle, a very popular state park in Erie, PA. And, look, medians!

Weber and Silverman's article for the Wall Street Journal has lots of good psychy/stats information  ( here is a .pdf of the article if you hit a pay wall ). I think it would also be applicable to health and I/O psychology classes. The graph below summarizes the main point of the article: Certain occupations have a greater likelihood of obesity than others (a good example of means, descriptive statistics, graphs to demonstrate variation from the mean). As such, how can employers go about increasing employee wellness? How does this benefit an organization financially? Can data help an employer decide upon where to focus wellness efforts? The article goes on to highlight various programs implemented by employers in order to increase employee health (including efficacy studies to test the effectiveness of the programs). In addition to the efficacy research example, the article describes how some employers are using various apps in order to collect data about employee health and...

This report from Pew  highlights the differences in opinions between the average American versus members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). For various topics, this graph reports the percentage of average Americans or AAAS members that endorse each science related issues as well as the gap between the two groups. Below, the yellow dots indicate the percentage of scientists that have a positive view of the issue and the blue indicate the same data for an average American. If you click on any given issue, you see more detailed information on the data. In addition to the interactive data, this report by Funk and Rainie summarizes the main findings. You can also access the original report of this data  (which contains additional information about public perception of the sciences and scientists). This could be a good tool for a research methods/statistics class in order to convince students that learning about the rigors of the scientif...