Ryosuke Fujii's (2026) How to Design Effective Scientific Figures lives up to its title and is written at a level accessible to undergraduate and graduate students when conference time rolls around. It was published in Nature, and it focuses on understanding which type of figure to use depending on a) your data and b) your audience. It is only three pages long, and I found myself nodding and agreeing with the main points, summarized here: Additionally, the article contains this helpful flowchart detailing when to use which graphs. I appreciate that the flowchart isn't jargon-heavy and that it focuses on functionality.
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. If this idea was helpful, you'll probably enjoy my textbook, Psychological Statistics for Everyone . It's basically this blog, but organized into a semester.