The thing about my way of teaching stats is that my cool, novel examples get old really fast. Like, pop culture is on a thirty-day cycle. Anyway, YEARS ago, 2014 to be exact, I blogged about illustrating bimodal data distributions using baby name data from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, when an older name comes back into vogue, it has a bimodal distribution when you plot time on the X axis. I stand by this example. However, all of the data illustrations come from 2014. When our traditionally aged college students were 6 or 7. Which makes this example feel a little stale. However, here is some data, courtesy of Redditor fevaah , showing old names that are back in vogue through 2025 ! And Eleanor, Violet, Nora, and Hazel are here, illustrating bimodal distributions for a new generation. If you used my old baby-name data, this is a quick, easy refresh for your lectures (or a fun new addition if you didn't). If this idea was help...
Ok. Only some examples have to be profound. Sometimes, an example can break up a dry lesson like z -scores. This is my favorite z -score example . Ever. This current post may become my second favorite. The Pudding's Words Against Strangers is a game with four minute-long rounds. Each round asks for a type of word. Adjectives containing the letter "m." Verbs that contain an "r" and are precisely five letters long. That sort of prompt. Then you have one minute to type in as many of these words as possible. I recommend playing this on a computer, not a phone. If you are over 40. You are competing against one person on the internet. After you play, your record is displayed as either: a) your over/under against the opponent b) your percentile score for everyone on the internet. Here is how I will use it in class. My students get into other games I've worked on in my classes ( Guess the Correlation ). I plan on asking my students to play this game, view their...