Property of xkcd.com

From discovery.com Hahahaha. Like my C-students don't already feel bad enough about themselves, evidence now suggests that babies  have a rudimentary understanding of probability (this summary is also a good example of research methods in developmental psychology).

From an actual, for realz peer-reviewed journal.

Bloomberg LP makes a lot of money by compiling financial data and making it available to clients who pay $20K a year to access the data via special terminals. Bloomberg also has a news branch. And reporters from the news branch have been collecting data from Bloomberg clients about how they are using/analyzing/etc. the Bloomberg data. Which has the clients up in arms as it could reveal business practices, propriety information, etc. When this story first made the news, the stock market plummeted. Currently, Bloomberg is l aunching its own investigation into the data abuse. Here  is one of the earlier news stories detailing the case as well as an NPR story about Bloomberg's reactions. While this doesn't teach statistics, per se, it does provide you with an example to share with your students about real life application of statistics, the value of statistics, data mining, and how our current legal system is facing challenges in regards to regulating data.

At least it is in black and white? Property of xKcd.com

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...

Jess Hagy illustrates her observations about life using simple graphs . I use her illustrations in order to provide examples to my students. Does this illustrate a positive or negative correlation? Property of Jess Hagy Would a correlation detect this relationship? Why or why not?  Property of Jess Hagy According to this diagram, what two different factors may account for the shared variance between the two variables?  Property of Jess Hagy

After months of hard work, hypothesizing, data collection...then you hold your breath and click "OK" in SPSS... From "I fucking love science" FB page

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 .)

How to lie with accurate data...note how Fox News used a "creative' graph in order to make an 8.6% unemployment rate look like a 9% unemployment rate. Full story available at Media Matters (which, admittedly, is very left-leaning). From Media Matters

Colorful title aside,  this article  teaches critical thinking when analyzing scientific writing for validity and reliability. Property of io9.com As a Social Psychologist, I'm especially grateful that they covered the "Study of Duh" criticism. It also adresses the difference between bad science and bad journalism and why one needs to see the source material for research before they are in a position to truly evaluate a study.

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.