My students struggle with sleeping and are distracted by electronics. This interactive activity allows them to think about their sleep relative to norms regarding age and sex. It also dives deeply into how sleep changes over a person's lifespan, which is a topic suitable for non-static classes like Health or Developmental.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2024/sleep-data-survey-americans/ *You need a WaPo subscription or paywall buster to get to this interactive. Like this one! https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/interactive/2024/sleep-data-survey-americans/ Here is a quick interactive that a) lets your students see how well they sleep, in comparison to their demographic and b) think about median data and percentile data.  1. Repursped, gently used data is really everywhere. This interactive uses data from the Census Bureau. Which is a way to measure sleep, but not the only way. 2. Median and percentil...

Y'all. This is a statsy example featuring sensation and perception, developmental, and neuroscience.  The study found that post-partum, but not pregnant, women, saw faces where there were no faces (pareidolia illusion) . It is attributed to the endogenous oxytocin bump women experience after they have babies. Here is a link to Newsweek's treatment of the study and the actual study . Here are some examples of the photos used in the experiment. They are so dear because I see faces. I think my favorite is the clothes washer. Anyway, the researchers used pregnant women, post-partum women, and a control group and measured how often they saw faces. How to use 1. There is a good ol' Mann-Whitney U in this study. Making this the first ever Mann-Whitney U featured on the blog. 2. The researchers used OSF, and the data is available . 3. I like the growing trend of pairing newer and older data visualizations. Here, bar graphs and jitter plots are used to illustrate the same data, and...

Don't you love it when research backs up your lifestyle? My kids LOVE dancing. We have been able to get both kids hooked on OK GO and Queen and Metallica. The big kid's favorite song is "Tell Me Something Good" by Chaka Khan and the little kid prefer's "Master of Puppets". We all like to dance together. My kids, husband, and sister dancing. Now, research suggests that our big, loud group activity may increase empathy in our kids. NPR summarized Dr. Laura Cirelli's research looking at 14 m.o.'s and whether they 1) helped or 2) did not help a stranger who either 1) danced in sync with them or 2) danced, but not in sync, with the child. She found (in multiple studies) that kids offer more assistance after they danced in sync with an adult.  How to use in class: 1) Here is fake chi-square, test of independence, data you can use in class. It IS NOT the data from the research but mimics the findings of the research. "Synced?" re...

In the past, I've used fake data based on real research to create stats class examples. Baby names, NICUs, and paired t-test . Pain, surgical recovery, and ANOVA . Today, I've decided to use fake data and fake research to create a real example for teaching one-sample t-test. It uses  this research report from The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/toddler-scientists-finally-determine-number-of-peas-tha-1820347088 In this press release, the baby scientists claim that the belief that a baby could only smash four peas into their ear canal were false. Based upon new research recommendations, that number has been revised to six. Which sure sounds like a one-sample t-test to me. Four is the mu assumed true based upon previous baby ear research. And the sample data had a mean of 6, and this was statistically significant. Here is some dummy data that I created that replicates these findings, when mu/test value is set to 4. : 5.00 6.00 7.00 6.00 5.00 6.00 6.00 5.0...

Reddit user jonjiv conducted a case study in human language development. He carefully monitored his son's speaking ability, and here is what he found: https://imgur.com/gallery/KwZ6C#qLwsn9S...go to this link for a clearer picture of the chart! How to use in class: 1) Good for Developmental Psychology. Look at that naming explosion! 2) Good to demonstrate how nerdy data collection can happen in our own lives. 3) Within versus between subject design. Instead of sampling separate 10, 11, 12, etc. month old children, we have real-time data collected from one child. AND this isn't retrospective data, either. 4) Jonjiv even briefly describes his "research methodology" in the original post. The word had to be used in a contextually appropriate manner AND observed by both him and his wife (inter-rater reliability!). He also stored his data in a Google sheet because of convenience/ease of tracking via cell phone.

The folks at Wall Street Journal took CDC disease data (by state, by year, courtesy of Project Tycho ) as well as information on when various vaccines were introduced to the public. And the data tells a compelling story about the importance of vaccinations. Below, the story of measles. How to use in class: -Using archival data to educate and make a point (here, vaccine efficacy) -Visualizing many data points (infections x state x year) effectively -Interactive: You can cursor over any cube to see the related data. Below, I've highlighted Pennsylvania data from 1957. -Since you can cursor over any data point to see the data, you can ask your students to pull data for use in class. -The present data were drawn from Project Tycho , a University of Pittsburgh initiative to better share public health data. This resource may be useful for your classes as well. -This data is good for Stats class, as well as Developmental, Health, Public Health, etc.

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...

I've been using this example in class for a few years but never got around to blogging about it until now. It seems that the first chapter of every statistics class provides a boring explanation of what a variable is, and examples of variables, and operationalizing variables, and quantifying the abstract for the purposes of conducting statistical analyses. I try to make that boring topic funnier and applicable to real life via this post entitled "Boyfriend doesn't have ebola. Probably." from Allie Brosh, editor of Hyperbole and a Half . In this posting, she rips apart the good old FACES scale after a trip with her boyfriend to the ER.

This study, which found a link between maternal Tylenol usage during pregnancy and ADHD, has been making the rounds, particularly in the Academic Mama circles I move in. Being pregnant is hard. For just about every malady, the only solution is to stay hydrated. With a compromised bladder. But at least pregnant women have Tylenol for sore hips and bad backs. For a long time, this has been the only safe OTC pain reliever available to pregnant women. But a recent research article has cast doubt on this advice. A quick read of this article makes it sound like you are cursing your child with a lifetime of ADHD if you take Tylenol. A nd this article has become click-bait fodder. But these findings have some pretty big caveats.  Harris published this reaction piece at NPR . It is a good teaching example of media hype vs. incremental scientific progress and the third (or fourth or fifth) variable problem. It also touches on absolute vs. relative risk. NOTE: There are well-documente...

My son, Artie, resting in the NICU When my second son was born via emergency c-section, he spent a week in the NICU out of an abundance of caution. It wasn't fun, but Artie pulled through just fine. He is a fat, happy four-month-old now. While we were there, I found out that many of the other NICU babies there were suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). They were born addicted to drugs. And those poor babies howled for hours as they were being weaned off of drugs and helped by staff. NPR's All Things Considered recently did a series about national efforts to help end NAS. Two of the segments from this series are possible learning moments for statistics and RM classes. One discusses efforts to use proper research methodology to create better treatment recommendations for NAS babies . The second discusses governmental efforts to use systematic data collection to better track NAS babies and get to the root of the problem . 1. Using clinical research to bette...

A great example using a topic relevant to your students (video games), involving developmental psychology (the effect of violent media on children), and a modern event (Scalia's passing) in order to demonstrate the importance of both research psychology as well as statistics. This article extensively quote Scalia's majority opinion regarding Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Association, a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case that decided against California's attempt to regulate the sale of violent video games to minors (the full opinion embedded in the article). Why did Scalia decide against regulating violent video games in the same manner that the government regulates alcohol and cigarette sales? In part, because research and statistics. Of particular use to an instructor of statistics are sections when Scalia cites shaky psychological research and argues that correlational research can not be used to make causal arguments... ...Scalia also discusses effect sizes... ...

I just had a baby. Arthur Francis joined our family last week. Don't mind the IV line on his head, he is a happy, chubby little boy. Now, I am the mother of a new born and a toddler. And I have certainly been inundated by the formula versus breast feeding debate. In case you've missed out on this, the debate centers around piles and piles of data that indicate that breast fed babies enjoy a wealth of developmental outcomes denied to their formula fed peers. Which means there is a lot of pressure to breast feed (and some women feel a lot of guilt when they can't/do not want to breast feed). However, the data that supports breast feeding also finds that breast feeding is much more common among  educated, wealthy white women with high IQs. And being born to such a woman probably affords a wealth of socioeconomic advantages beyond simply breast milk. These issues, as well as mixed research findings, are reviewed in Emily Oster's "Everybody calm down about brea...

Alright. This teaching idea is pretty involved. It is bigger than any one instructor and requires interdepartmental effort as well as support from The Powers that Be at your university. The U.S. Holocaust Museum hosts a number of  traveling exhibits . One in particular, " Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race ", provides a great opportunity for the discussions of research ethics, the protection and treatment of human research subjects, and how science can be used to justify really horrible things. I am extraordinarily fortunate that Gannon University's Department of History (with assistance from our Honors program as well as College of the Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences) has worked hard to get this exhibit to our institution during the Fall 2015 semester. It is housed in our library through the end of October. How I used it in my class: My Honors Psychological Statistics class visited the exhibit prior to a discussion day about research ethics. In...

I often share news stories that illustrate easy-to-follow, engaging research that appeals to undergraduates. For the first time, I'm also providing a mini data set that 1) mimics the original findings and 2) provides an example of ANOVA. This story by Patty Neighmond , reporting for NPR, describes a  study  investigating the role of music in pain reduction. The study used three groups of kids, all recovering from surgery. The kids either 1) listened to music, 2) listened to an audio books, or 3) sat with noise-cancelling ear phones for 30 minutes. The researchers found that kids in both the music and audio book experienced pain reduction levels comparable to over-the-counter pain medication while the control group enjoyed no such benefits. And the research used the 10-point FACES scale, allowing for a side discussion about how we collect data from humans who don't have the best vocabularies or limited communication skills. This study can also be used as a way t...

51% of the babies born in the US are male. Why? For a long time, people just assumed that the skew started at conception. Then Steven Orzack decided to test this assumption. He (and colleagues) collected sex data from abortions, miscarriages, live births (30 million records!), fertility clinics (140,00 embryos!), and different fetal screening tests (90,000 medical records!) to really get at the root of the sex skew/conception assumption. And the assumption didn't hold up: The sex ratio is pretty close to 50:50 at conception. Further analysis of the data found that female fetuses are more likely to be lost during pregnancy. Original research article here . Richard Harris' (reporting for NPR) radio story and interview with Orzack here . Use this story in class as a discussion piece about long held (but never empirically supported) assumptions in the sciences and why we need to conduct research in order to test such assumptions. For example: 1) Discuss the weaknesses of previo...

One way to engage students in the classroom is by bringing in debates and real world examples. Sometimes, such debates take place largely over social media. A Facebook question du jour: Is "free-range" (letting your kids go out side, walk to the store, etc. without supervision) a good way to build independence or child neglect? Anecdotes abound, but how safe is your kid when they are out on their own? What kind of data could help us answer this question objectively? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/opinion/the-case-for-free- range-parenting.html The first piece of information comes from an opinion piece by Clemens Wergin from the New York Times ( .pdf in case of pay wall). Wergin describes how free range parenting is the norm in Germany and contrasts American attitudes to German attitudes, providing a quick example of multicultralism (and why we should never assume that the American attitude towards something is the only opinion). He then  provides data that explain...

I am the mother of a boundary-testing two year old and my little guy likes to replicate his research findings with me all day long. We're currently trying to pull a sufficient n-size to test his hypothesis of whether or not I will ever let him eat dog food. I don't want to p-hack, but I'm pretty sure that that answer is no.

Slate's The Littlest Tasters More research methods than statistics, this article describes the difficulty in determining taste preferences in wee humans who don't speak well if at all. slate.com The goods for teaching: They mention the FACE scale. The research methods described go beyond marketing research and this could be useful in a Developmental class to describe approaches used in data collection for children (like asking parents to rate their children's reactions to foods). I've used this as a discussion board prompt when discussing research ethics, both for simply conducting research with children as well as the ethics of marketing (not so healthy foods) towards children. Aside: They also describe why kids like Lunchables, which has always been a mystery to me. Apparently, kids are picky about texture and flavor but they haven't developed a preference for certain foods to be hot or cold. The Huffington Post's " You'll Never Look at ...

If you teach social psychology, you are probably familiar with Dr. Jon Mueller's Resources for the Teaching of Social Psychology website .  You may not be as familiar with Mueller's Correlation or Causation website, which keeps a running list of news stories that summarize research findings and either treat correlation appropriately or suggest/imply/state a causal relationship between correlational variables. The news stories run the gamut from research about human development to political psychology to research on cognitive ability. When I've used this website in the past, I have allowed my students to pick a story of interest and discuss whether or not the journalist in question implied correlation or causation. Mueller also provides several ideas (both from him and from other professors) on how to use his list of news stories in the classroom.

This story discusses the many levels of analysis required to get to the bottom of the hypothesis stated in the title of this story. For instance, are cigarettes or the patch better for mom? The baby? If the patch isn't great for either but still better than smoking, what sort of advice should a health care provider give to their patient who is struggling to quit smoking? What about animal model data? I think this story also opens up the conversation about how few medical interventions are tested on pregnant women (understandably so), and, as such,  researchers have to opt for more observational research studies when investigating medical interventions for protected populations.