This isn't the first time this issue has been broached. However, this time, it has an awesome graphic to summarize the issue. The io9 article also has links to various citations regarding the issue. Here is an accessible, short reading on the same topic writting by Sharon Begley.

Hofstede is a psychology rockstar who studies multiculturalism (specifically, how his cultural dimensions vary from country to country and how this can impact organizations). This page generates bar graphs that illustrate how the two countries you specify vary on his dimensions. Below is a screen grab of the U.S. compared to Brazil along his dimensions. Note: If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because you read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and he discusses Power Distance in the context of the Korean Air safety issues. How could you use this in the classroom? 1) This could be a quick example of the importance of multicultural research (as the Western view of the world/attitudes are not the default setting for humans).  2) A quick way of demonstrating bar graphs. 3) A good example of applied social psychology.  From geert-hofstede.com

Best. Awful. Headline. Ever. T his headline makes it sound like many young women support the sexting, bad-decision-making, former NY representative Anthony Weiner. However, if one takes a moment to read the article, one will learn that the "young women" sampled were recruited from SeekingArrangement.com. A website for women looking for sugar daddies. If you want your brain to further explode, read through the comments section for the article. Everyone is reacting to the headline. Very few people actually read through the article themselves...which provides further anecdotal evidence that most folks can't tell good data from bad (and that part of our job as statistics instructors, in my opinion, is to ameliorate this problem).

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...

Here is a publication  from Teaching of Psychology in which I outline not one, not two, not three, but FOUR free/cheap internet based activities to be used in statistics/research methods classes. (If you have access to ToP publications, you can also get it here .)

from http://hello-jessica.tumblr.com Who knew that Zoidberg was an ad hoc reviewer?

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

So. I shared my little blog on the Teaching of Psychology list serv last week. And within the next 24 hours, I received about 1000 page views, which blew my mind. Honestly, I know it can be an up-hill battle to teach statistics and I love the idea that maybe I'm giving my colleagues some new ideas to spice up their classes. Better yet, I received emails from fellow psychologists with websites to share. One of these psychologists was Dr. Richard Landers from Old Dominion University. So, is it just me, or has anyone else thought, "Gosh, I wish I could just create a data set for <insert statistical test here> that would be <sig/ns> so that I could ensure that my students had the experience of analyzing that kind of test?" Well, Richard's website will provide you with exactly that!  Not only do you get the data set, but you get the APA write up and output for the data as well! Richard created it as a study guide for his students but I can see where...

Gone fishing... property of xkcd.com

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. 

Slate's Hollywood Career-O-Matic This story from Slate.com allows students to think about sampling error and data visualization within the context of movies, actors, and directors. This Slate article discusses the movie review meta-webiste  Rotten Tomatoes . This website is of statistical note in and of itself since it compiles the reviews of many, many film critics and then provide at Rotten Tomato score based on this sampling. The Slate article takes this data a step further by providing an interactive  chart that you can use to generate graphs that track a given actor or director's career. Below, the Tomato ratings of the films of Lindsay Lohan. When I use this in class, I ask the students if they believe that Rotten Tomatoes data should be used to set salaries or guide casting. Additionally, I like to provide my students with the 10 Ten Highest Grossing Movies for the year as well as the Top 10 Highest Rated movies (as rated by Rotten Tomatoes) of th...