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What do SEMs and criminal investigations have in common?

I really, really believe in using non-scientific examples and comparisons to teach statistics. In this post, I will show you how I see comparisons between criminal investigations and scientific investigations. Specifically, after a summer spent going down a true-crime rabbit hole, I think that criminal investigations and court cases are sort of like SEM. 1. Investigators and statisticians are sometimes forced to use tangible evidence to infer about intangible variables and concepts. 2. An evidence board is basically a path diagram, right? Don't worry, I made a whole PowerPoint to explain . And maybe you can use the PowerPoint the next time you teach SEM.
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Modern musician vocabularies: See how I extracted this data using GenAI, and how you can use it in class.

I intended for this to be a post about the singer vocabulary. It is still that, but it is also a post about using GenAI to grab data from an image. I mean, you can use Excel to do the same thing, but GenAI is a lot easier. Here we go. It starts with the Word Tips website, which helps you solve your crossword puzzles and Wordle. This website also has a blog dedicated to words. One such blog post explored which singers have the largest vocabularies, as measured by the number of  unique words in their lyrics. Their blog post compared music legends to newer talent. There are a ton of fun data visualizations on the website; go check it out. Since I teach college students, I decided to concentrate on the musicians my students listen to: In and of itself, this image serves as an example of bar graphs, good data visualization, and proper use of "buckets". However, I figured we could find a way to use the raw data in class. Create your own data visualization, create your own buckets....

Lesson plan to teach statistical literacy to elementary school students

Today, I'm taking a break from blogging about college teaching and sharing a mini-lesson I created for elementary school-aged students. I am sharing my activity here because I bet I'm not the only college instructor who has been asked to do community outreach with kids, be it at local STEM festivals, children's museums, or elementary school career exploration days. Feel free to take this idea and run with it. I taught this lesson as part of the Wonder Time series at my local children's museum,  Erie Children's Museum  in Erie, PA. My friend, Claire, is a former stats student and former STEM teacher at my kids' school. She is the current education director at the museum. PS: I love my small town life, and the museum is just a few blocks from my workplace.  A description of the Wonder Time series  My question was, "How do number experts predict the future?" As I put together my lesson, I was inspired by all the different ways instructors are already usin...