I apologize in advance if you are pandemiced out. It is just that my brain won't stop seeing stats examples in information related to the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, researchers are looking back at the 1918 Flu Pandemic in order to forecast how social distancing (or lack thereof) will affect mortality rates now. And these patterns, as illustrated by National Geographic, demonstrate different data distribution shapes . The data comes from a reputable source, is scaled to deaths per 100,000 as to allow for comparison, and the distributions are related to very important data. Other lessons your students can learn from this data: This is what good scicomm looks like. Also, sometimes a good data visualization is better than an accurate-yet-filled-with-jargon version of the same information. For instance, much has been shared about NYC vs St. Louis in terms of timing of quarantine. Here is the comparison yet again, but in an easier-to-follow description: There is a ton of...

TL:DR: Imma send my students to YouTube to watch three MythBuster clips that approximately illustrate t-test research designs. Then, they will identify the t-test research design that is illustrated by each of these clips.  More detail. MythBusters is a show that gleefully creates research to test urban legends and random questions that arise in day to day life. The questions that my clips tackle are: a) how badly do people drive when distracted by hands-free cell phones, b) could Indiana Jones have really made it through the chamber at the beginning of Temple of Doom and c) what is faster: Weaving in and out of lanes or staying in the right-hand lane when driving? So, they will watch the clips, and I will ask them questions (they will submit their answers via Google Forms Quiz) to make sure they can tell which sort of t-tests you would use to analyze the data, given research design. Here is the PPT I will use. I've never used this exact clip in class before. I di...

Hello, my friends. We live in strange times. I will try to share everything so that this transition to online education is more manageable. My university is pausing teaching for this week (3/16-3/20), so we can prepare. I've prepared my first lesson. I've used this lesson before. I like this lesson because you can use it with ANY of the inferential statistics taught in Intro Stats. Here is my PPT for the projec t. I used it for an Independent t-test, but you can use it for any test. What you need: A FB account, a way to share a lecture with your students, a way for your students to share ideas about what sorts of variables you can glean from FB. What your students need: A FB account (I suggest you create an extra data set to share with students who don't have one), a way to conduct statistical tests (by hand, calculator, JASP, Excel, R).  Tips:  1. I don't think this is an excellent way to introduce a statistical test, but I think it is a usef...

Psi Chi, the psychology honor society, is sponsoring a fun, free, low-commitment way to help your students (and maybe you?) learn R. I talked with Jordan Wagge, one psychologists spearheading the project (along with John Eldund and April Staples), and my understanding is that there will be multiple cycles of this class, using different data, research questions, and inferential statistics (so, if your students can't do this right now, a new cycle will start Late Spring). Each cycle will run the course of three months. There will be an assignment due in the middle of each month. This class would be great for any graduate school-bound undergraduate. Here is the formal intro from Psi Chi . A good place to get started is this Google Doc that outlines the whole contest and the process you/your students will go through, step by step. Here are all of the materials , hosted on OSF. Also, if you successfully complete it YOU GET A STICKER. And I find that the UGs love stickers. N...

Hi, friends. There is a free, new edited volume that contains 18 terrific chapters of ideas and hints and guidance for teaching undergraduate statistics. Drs. Beyer & Peters but so much work into gathering ideas from great teachers and now we can all enjoy it.  I wrote Chapter 1. In it, I make an argument that we need to teach statistics to our psychology UGs in a way that better matches how they will use the statistics. TL:DR: 4% of psychology UGs get PhDs in psychology. So maybe we should reconsider how and who we are teaching. Download it here:  https://teachpsych.org/resources/Documents/ebooks/love-teaching-undergrad-stats.pdf

If you, or your students, want to know everything there is to know about ANOVA, you can point them towards this free resource: Tabachnick and Fidel's Experimental Designs Using ANOVA. Access it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k3g7kl2h7u3kkwd/ExperimentalDesignsUsingANOVA.pdf And this is a legit, non-exploitive, non-stolen copy of the book. According to this post from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook group, T&F have decided to share the book freely.

TL:DR: Ameri-centric teaching example ahead: Have your students take this quiz, and the internet will tell them which regions of the US talk the same as them. Use it to teach validity. Longer Version: The NYT created a gorgeous version ( https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html ) of a previously available quiz ( http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/cambridge_survey/ ) that tells the user what version of American English they speak. The prediction is based upon loads and loads of survey data that studies how we talk. It takes you through 25 questions that ask you how you pronounce certain words and which regional words you use to describe certain things. Here are my results: Indeed, I spent elementary school in Northern Virginia, my adolescence in rural Central PA, college at PSU, and I now live in the far NW corner of PA. As this test indeed picked up on where I've lived and talked, I would say that this is a  valid  test based just on my u...

This may or may not interest my Teaching of Statistics crowd, but I've started a new blog filled with amusing, one-off ideas and examples for teaching Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Like this gem about using data to detect bias in workplace staffing. But in Paw Patrol: I'm teaching it this Spring and have realized that while compiling my own ideas for teaching I/O, I might as well share them with everyone as well. You can find the new blog here .

Hi, all- Happy 400th blog post to me! Anyway, here and there, people request my syllabuses. I'm happy to share them. I'm also sort of proud to share them this semester. Per ideas I've seen circulating on Twitter and at conferences, I've made three big changes this year: 1. I made them more visually appealing. Not just for aesthetic's sake, though, but to better organize information. 2. I've included a section that features a) hints for success from past students and b) my hints for success/extra resources. 3. I more directly addressed the fact that our students can face crises during the semester and I am here to help them with their problems. I also included a list of additional resources for assisting students. Thank you to everyone who has every shared their good ideas for improving our syllabuses. Anyway, here are my Honors Psych Stats syllabus and my Online Psych Stats syllabus.

A while ago, some of you were kind enough to complete my survey about how you teach Introduction to Statistics to psychology majors. I have some preliminary findings to share in infographic form, both here on my blog and at the Saturday afternoon-evening poster session here at NITOP. Here is a link to the .PDF version .

I love data-informed opinions and arguments. So, I was fascinated when NPR told me that some academics quietly take side gigs in which they use data to help tobacco companies. Specifically, tobacco companies argue that, over time, people have become more and more aware of the risks associated with smoking. As such, Big Tobacco argues that they should not be held responsible for the harm caused by smoking. From NPR: I went down the rabbit hole to find the original data and more information on Gallups position, and this is what I found: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1717/tobacco-smoking.aspx So, while American's had heard about the potential connection between cancer and smoking, not everyone believed that this was true (41%), and many people weren't sure about the link (29%). How to use in class: -Data used in court. -Data is used by historians. More here:  http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/Ethics-of-Consulting-for-the-Tobacco-Industry.p...

I teach many, many statistics classes. In addition to the core topics typically covered in Introductory Statistics, I think covering real-life controversies involving statistics is vital. Usually, these are stories of large organizations that attempted to bias/PR attack/skew/p-hack/cherry-pick data to serve their own purposes.  I believe that these examples serve to show why data literacy is so critical because data is used in so many fields, AND our students must prepare themselves to evaluate data-based claims throughout their lives. I put out a call on Twitter , and my friends there helped me generate a great list of such controversies. I put this list into a spreadsheet with links to primers on each topic. This isn't an in-depth study of any of these topics, but the links should get you going in the right direction if you would like to use them in class. I hope this helps my fellow stats teachers integrate more applied examples into their classes. If you h...

Create an account with Pew Research, and you can download some of their data sets, including a) syntax files, b) detailed methodology, and c) codebook, including detailed screenshots of what the survey felt like to participants.  I think there are three ways to use this in class: -Show your students what proper data documentation looks like -Get some data, run some analyses -Get some data, look up Pew's reports based on the data, see if you can replicate the findings. How to Properly Document Your Research Process. Pew documents the hell out of these data sets. Included are: Syntax files: Methodology: Surveys, featuring the questions but also screenshots of the user experience: Get some data, run some analyses. MY FIRST EVER FACTOR ANALYSIS EXAMPLE, y'all. Per the methodology documentation, Pew creates its own scales. Within this data set (American Trends Panel Wave 34), they use several scales to measuring attitudes about medical treatments. ...