UPDATE: The link listed below is currently not working. I've talked to Ariana Giorgi about this, and she is working to get her graph up and running again via Bloomberg. She was kind enough to provide me with a provide me with alternate URLs to the interactive scatter plot  as well as a link to the original text of the story . Ariana is doing a lot of interesting work with data visualizations, follow her on Twitter or hit up her website . _______________________________________________________________________________ This scatter plot (and accompanying news story from Bloomberg News)  demonstrates what a non-existent linear relationship looks like. The data plots CEO pay on the x-axis and stock market return for that CEO's organization on the y-axis. I could see where this graph would also be useful in an I/O course in discussions of (wildly unfair) compensation, organizational justice, etc. http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-22/for-ceos-correlation...

Do you follow  Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal  on  Facebook  or  Twitter ? Zach Weinersmith's hilarious web comic series frequently touches upon science, research methods, data collection, and statistics. Here are some such comics. Good for spiffing up a power point, spiffing up an office door (the first comic adorns mine) or ( per this post ) testing understanding of statistical concepts. http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2080...also a good example of the availability bias! http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3129 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3435 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1744 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2980 http://smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4084 http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-08-05 https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4127 http://smbc-comics.com/comic/false-positives https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/relax

Pew Research went around the globe and asked folks in 40 different countries if a variety of different behaviors qualified as "Unacceptable", "Acceptable", or "Not a moral issue". See below for a broad summary of the findings. Summary of international morality data from Pew The data on this website is highly interactive...you can break down the data by specific behavior, by country, and also look at different regions of the world. This data is a good demonstration of why graphs are useful and engaging when presenting data to an audience. Here is a summary of the data from Pew.  It nicely describes global trends (extramarital affairs are largely viewed as unacceptable, and contraception is widely viewed as acceptable). How you could use this in class. 1) Comparison of different countries and beliefs about what is right, and what is wrong. Good for discussions about multiculturalism, social norms, normative behaviors, the influence of religion ...

My favorite data is data that is both counter-intuitive and tests the efficacy of commonly held beliefs. Emily Oster's (writing for 538) presents such  data in her investigation of vitamin efficacy . The short version of this article: Data that associates vitamins with health gains are based on crap observational research. More recent and better research throws lots of shade on vitamin usage. Specific highlights that could make for good class discussion: -This article explains the flaws in observational research as well as an example of how to do good observational research well (via The Physician's Health Study , with large samples of demographically similar individuals as described in the portion of the article featuring the Vitamin E study). This point provides an example of why controlled, double-blind lab research is the king of all the research. -This is an accessible example as most of your students took their Flintstones. -The article also demonstrates The Thir...

On November 3, 2014, Hyundai and Kia were fined a record-setting $100 million for violating the Clean Air Act. In addition, they were fined for cooking their data and misreporting their fuel economy, using the unethical (cherry-picking) techniques described below by representatives of the federal government: " "One was the use of, not the average data from the tests, but the best data. Two, was testing the cars at the temperature where their fuel economy is best. Three -- using the wrong tire sizes; and four, testing them with a tail wind but then not turning around in the other direction and testing them with a head wind. So I think that speaks to the kinds problems that we saw with Hyundai and Kia that resulted in the mismeasurement." Video and quote from Sam Hirsch, acting assistant attorney general.    Here is EPA's press release about the fine .  How to use it in class: -Hyundai and Kia cherry-picked data, picking out the most flattering data but not the...

NEVER MIND ABOUT THIS ONE, GUYS! https://hal.sorbonne-universite.fr/hal-01580259/file/Dragicevic_Jansen_2017.pdf (Note the second author). ___________________________________________________________ Wolfers (writing for the New York Times) summarizes a study from  Wansink and Tal  (2014) in which participants were either a) presented with just  in-text data about a drug trial or b) the text as well as with a bar graph that conveyed the exact same information. The results can be read below: Wolfers/NYT According to Wansink and Tal, the effects seem to be strongest in people who agreed with the statement "I believe in science". So, a graph makes a claim more "sciencier" and, therefore, more credible? Also, does this mean that science believers aren't being as critical because they already have an underlying belief in what they are reading?  I think this is a good way of conveying the power of graphs to students in a statistics class as well ...

Kristopher Magnusson (previously featured on this blog for his interactive illustration of correlation ) also has a helpful illustration of effect size . While this example probably has some information that goes beyond an introductory understanding of effect size (via Cohen's d ) I think this still does a great job of illustrating how effect size measures, essentially, the magnitude of the difference between groups (not how improbably those differences are). See below for a screen shot of the tool. http://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/, created by Kristopher Magnusson

This resource from UCLA is , essentially, a decision making tree for determining what kind of statistical analysis is appropriate based upon your data (see below). Screen shot from "What statistical analysis should I use?" Now, such decision making trees are available in many statistics text book...however... what makes this special is the fact that with each test comes code/syntax as well as output for SAS, Stata, SPSS, and R. Which is helpful to our students (and, let's be honest, us instructors/researchers as well).

As created by Jess Hartnett.

I think this very important cookie research is appropriate for the Christmas cookie baking season. I also believe that it provides a good example of the scientific method. Arias started out with a baseline cookie recipe (baseline Nestle Toll House Cookie Recipe, which also served as her control group) and modified the recipe in a number of different ways (IVs) in order to study several dependent variables (texture, color, density, etc.). The picture below illustrates the various outcomes per different recipe modifications. For science! http://www.handletheheat.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-chocolate-chip-cookies Also, being true scientist, her original study lead to several follow up studies investigating the effect of different kinds of pans and flours  upon cookie outcomes. http://www.handletheheat.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-chocolate-chip-cookies-part-2 I used this example to introduce hypothesis testing to my students. I had them identify the null and alternative ...

Recently, a Facebook craze asked users to list three things you are thankful for for five days. Data scientis ts Winter Mason, Funda Kivran-Swaine,  Moira Burke, and Lada Adamic  at Fa cebook have analyzed this dat a to better understand the patterns of gratitude publically shared by Facebook users. The data analysts broke down data by most frequently listed gratitude topic: Most frequently "liked" gratitude posts: (lots of support for our friends in recovery, which is nice to see). Gender differences in gratitude...here is data for women. The wine gratitude finding for women was not present in the data for men. Ha. Idiosyncratic data by state. I would say that Pennsylvania's fondness for country music rings true for me. How to use in class: This example provides several interesting, easy to read graphs, and the graphs show how researchers can break down a single data set in a variety of interesting ways (by gender, by age, by state). Add...

This Scientific American podcast by Diane Fine Maron describes how the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) used Twitter data to shut down restaurants with health code violations. Essentially, the CDPH monitored Tweets in Chicago, searching for the words "food poisoning". When such a tweet was identified, an official at CDPH messaged the Twitterer in question with a link to an official complain form website. The results of this program? "During a 10-month stretch last year, staff members at the health agency responded to 270 tweets about “food poisoning.” Based on those tweets, 193 complaints were filed and 133 restaurants in the city were inspected. Twenty-one were closed down and another 33 were forced to fix health violations. That’s according to a study in the journal  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  [Jenine K. Harris et al,  Health Department Use of Social Media to Identify Foodborne Illness — Chicago, Illinois, 2013–2014 ]" I think this is ...

  OpenStax  CNX  " is a dynamic non-profit digital ecosystem serving millions of users per month in the delivery of educational content to improve learning outcomes. " So, free text books that can be easily downloaded. Including nearly 7,000 free statistics text books as well as over 1,500  research  methods texts . How OpenStax works (viahttp://cnx.org/about) I like this format because it is free but also because it is flexible enough that you can pick and choose chapters from different text books to use in a class. Additionally, if you are feeling generous, you can upload your own content to share.