Skip to main content

Posts

Latest Post:

Updated example of using baby names to illustrate bimodal distributions.

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...
Read more

Blatant self-promotion: My textbook publisher is now accepting requests for exam copies of my textbook!!

Holy smokes. I am almost done with my textbook, Statistics for Everyone. It is a Psych. Stats. textbook. Like, the project started in 2019. It really started when I started my blog in 2012, but my awesome, supportive team at Norton and I started working on this textbook in 2019. I have been supported every step of the way by my editorial team. Norton understood my vision: An engaging, supportive, joyful stats textbook. It is filled with science silliness, and pop culture. Something that prepares students to become statisticians AND citizens in an increasingly data-driven world. Something I created out of my experiences teaching smart, hardworking, sometimes hesitant statistics students at Gannon University since 2009.  I am so excited to share it with you all. It is going to be something special. I want to help you teach your statistics class, and I want to help your students understand statistics.  If you would like to pre-register for an exam copy of the book, please go to t...
Read more

The Taylor Swift Effect: Does Tay-tay's presence influence Travis Kelce's performance?

In what is a common occurance for this blog, it all started with a Tweet. A very punny Tweet https://twitter.com/ESPNFantasy/status/1716216331752624509 It begs the question: How are various indicators of Kelce's performance influenced by the presence or absence of one Taylor Swift? What she is steadily attending games this fall, we'll have to wait and see if her international tour, starting 11/7, changes that. Regardless, I'll update THIS SPREADSHEET over the season so you can run all of the independent t-tests you want with your students.  AND SOMEDAY I WILL UPDATE THIS SPREADSHEET TO INCLUDE WHETHER OR NOT THEIR CHILDREN ATTEND I SWEAR IT IS COMING.
Read more

That time Mr. Beast did a paired t-test

1. I assure you, your traditional college-aged students know who Mr. Beast is. 2. If you don't know who he is, just Google him. 3. His real name is Jimmy so that's what I'll call him for the remainder of the post because while I respect his work and can't handle writing/referring to an adult human who isn't a wrestler as Mr. Beast again. Anyway, Jimmy shared, via Twitter (it is still Twitter) that he had done some A/B testing on his clips. A story in two Tweets.  https://twitter.com/MrBeast/status/1699460698726613343 https://x.com/MrBeast/status/1699460698726613343?s=20 This story made the rounds because Mr. Beast is such a famous YouTuber . How can you use this example in class? 1. Introduce A/B testing, and how some of the techniques used by professional statisticians are actually pretty straightforward application of basic statistics tests (here, paired t -test). 2. Conduct a paired t -test: I made up some pretend data that imitates these findings . 3. Review the...
Read more