I use this when introducing the availability heuristic in Intro and Social (good ol' comparison of fatal airline accidents vs. fatal car crashes), but I think it could also be used in a statistics class. For starters, it is a novel way of illustrating data. Second, you could use it to spark a discussion on the importance of data-driven decision making when it comes to public policy/charitable giving. For instance, breast cancer has really good PR, but more women are dying of cardiovascular disease...where should the NSF concentrate its efforts to make the biggest possible impact? Property of Newsweek More of same from Curiosity.com... curiosity.com  https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bur_W0hCMAAOidE.png

The language blue, so use at your own risk...  but this faux debate is hilarious . I use it in my I/O and statistics classes to illustrate reliability, psychometric concerns related to test takers who are not totally engaged in their task, etc.

A chocolate study seems very appropriate for the day after Easter. Messerli's study found a strong and positive correlation between a nation's per capita chocolate consumption and the number of Nobel prizes won by that nation (see graph below). The research article is a pretty straight forward: The only statistical analysis conducted was a correlation, the journal article is very short, and it used archival data. As such, you can use this example to illustrate correlation and archival data as well as the dread "third variable" problem (by asking students to generate variables that may increase chocolate consumption as well as top-notch research/writing/peace/etc.). Property of Messerli/New England Journal of Medicine

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

A lovely, concise guide to the APA formatting rules for a number of common statistical tests. Good for our students but also helpful for us professors. Edited to add: Here is their main page with tons of great writing resources .

For the original, click here . Property of history.com

In honor of Daylight Savings Time and my own caffeine addiction. This will always be the funniest graph ever, p < .05. Property of Nathaniel James

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

Sometimes I think I'm a big nerd. Then I read about an even bigger nerd and I feel better about myself because I'm less nerdy but then worse about myself because I'm not as hard core as I once thought I was. Especially when their nerd focus is on 1)statistics and 2) The Hunger Games.

This exercise encourages students to think critically about the statistics that they encounter in the media.  Note: This data is about abortion. When I use this exercise, I stress to my students that the exercise isn't about being pro-choice or anti-abortion, it is about being anti-bad statistics. Writer Sarah Kliff published an  article in Newsweek about de-stigmatizing abortion. In the article, she makes the claim that 40% of American women have had abortions. Some readers questioned this estimate. This is her reply to those readers. I challenge my students to find flaws or possible flaws/points of concern in the mathematics behind the 40% estimate. Some points that they come up with: a) The data doesn't include minors, b) the data doesn't include women who were alive between 1973 (Row v. Wade) and 2004 and but died/moved out of the US before the 2005 census data (which was used in her calculations), c) data estimates that about half of women having an abortion at...

Property of xkcd.com Teach your students about box plots, outliers, and how rational persuasion only works with rational matters.

Calm down. This is a  satirical video from TheOnion  that goes into gory detail about a research project that suggests that stabbing may be fatal in monkeys. I show it in my statistics classes because it touches on 1) research methods, 2) replication and extension, and 3) control groups (monkeys who were merely punched). And it is comedy gold.   property of theonion.com

Words can be powerful and value-laden. This can have an impact upon survey responses, as it did for this survey about attitudes towards gays serving in the military. This survey was taken in 2010, and gays can now openly serve in the military, but I still think this example is still a powerful way of teaching the weight of words when creating surveys. property of cbs.com I tend to use this as an extra credit, asking my students to respond to two questions: