So, the Journal of the American Medical Academy publishes v isual abstracts  for some of its research articles. I've written about them before (in particular, this example that illustrates an ANOVA ). These abstracts succinctly summarize the research. They feel like an infographic but contain all of the main sections of a research paper. They are great. They quickly relate the most essential parts of a research study and have a home in Intro Stats.  I love them in Psych Stats and use them for several reasons. 1. Using medical examples reminds Psych Stats students that Psych Stats is really Stats Stats, and stats are used everywhere. 2. These are simplified real-world examples. JAMA creates these to help highlight essential facts for journalists and the public, so Intro Stats students are more than ready to take these on. 3. I like to use these as a quick review of some of the inferential tests we teach in stats. This is no guarantee that basic stats were used in the project, b...

Twitter is my muse. This blog post was inspired by this Tweet:    In a study comparing blood concentrations of caffeine after coffee or energy drink consumption, blood caffeine levels peaked at about 60 minutes in all conditions. Plan accordingly. https://t.co/cWWakGGtHe pic.twitter.com/c5Nn3x3w1f — Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) November 30, 2021 This study is straightforward to follow. I, personally, think it is psych-friendly because it is about how a drug affects the body. However, it doesn't require much psych theory knowledge to follow this example. Sometimes I'm worried that when we try too many theory-heavy examples in stats class, we're muddying the waters by expecting too much from baby statisticians who are also baby psychologists. Anyway. Here are some things you can draw out of this example: 1. Factors and levels in ANOVA The factor and levels are easy to identify for students. They can also relate to these examples. I wonder if they used Bang energy drinks? They a...

There are a lot of lessons in this one study  (Craig, Nelson, & Dixson, 2019): Within subject design, factorial ANOVA and interactions,and data is available via OSF. Let's begin: TL: DR: The original study looked and the presence or absence of beards and whether or not this affected participants' ability to decode the emotional expression on a man's face. Or, more eloquently: TL: DR: Their stimuli were pictures of the same dudes with and without beards. And those weren't just any dudes, they had been trained in the Ekman facial coding system as to make distinct expressions. Or... One participant, rating the same man in Bearded vs. Non-bearded condition, provides a clear example of within subject research design. This article also provides examples of interactions and two-way ANOVA. Here look at aggression ratings for expressing (happy v. angry) and face hairiness (clean-shaven v. beard). Look at that bearded face interaction! Bearded guy...

New York Magazine's  The Science of Us made a brief, funny video that investigates the long running issue of the dangers of double dipping.  It is based on a Scientific America report of an actual published research article  about double dipping. Yes, it includes the Seinfeld clip about George double dipping. The video provides a brief example of how to go about testing a research hypothesis by operationalizing a hypothesis, collecting, and analyzing data. Here, the abstract question is about how dirty it is to double dip. And they operationalized this question: Research design: The researchers used a design that, conceptually, demonstrates ANOVA logic (the original article contains an ANOVA, the video itself makes no mention of ANOVA). The factor is "Dips" and there are three levels of the factor: Before they double dipped, they took a base-line bacterial reading of each dip. Good science, that. They display the findings in table form (aga...