"Correlation is not causation", Parts 1 and 2

Jethro Waters, Dan Peterson, Ph.D., Laurie McCollough, and Luke Norton made a pair of animated videos (1, 2) that explain why correlation does not equal causation and how we can perform lab research in order to determine if causal relationships exist.

I like them a bunch. Specific points worth liking:

-Illustrations of scatter plots for significant and non-significant relationships.

Data does not support the old wive's tale that everyone goes a little crazy during full moons.

-Explains the Third Variable problem.

Simple, pretty illustration of the perennial correlation example of ice cream sales (X):death by drowning (Y) relationship, and the third variable, hot weather (Z) that drives the relationship.

-In addition to discussing correlation =/= causation, the video makes suggestions for studying a correlational relationship via more rigorous research methods (here violent video games:violent behavior).

Video games (X) influence aggression (Y) via the moderator of personality (Z)

In order to test the video game hypothesis without using diary/retrospective data collection, the video describes how one might design a research study to test this hypothesis.

-Finally, at the end of the video, they provide citations to the research used in the video. You could take this example a step further and have your students look at the source research.

Special thanks to Rajiv Jhangiani for introducing me to this resource!

Ways to use funny meme scales in your stats classes

Have you ever heard of the theory that there are multiple people worldwide thinking about the same novel thing at the same time? It is the multiple discovery hypothesis of invention . Like, multiple great minds around the world were working on calculus at the same time. Well, I think a bunch of super-duper psychology professors were all thinking about scale memes and pedagogy at the same time. Clearly, this is just as impressive as calculus. Who were some of these great minds? 1) Dr. Molly Metz maintains a curated list of hilarious "How you doing?" scales. 2) Dr. Esther Lindenström posted about using these scales as student check-ins. 3) I was working on a blog post about using such scales to teach the basics of variables. So, I decided to create a post about three ways to use these scales in your stats classes: 1) Teaching the basics of variables. 2) Nominal vs. ordinal scales. 3) Daily check-in with your students. 1. Teach your students the basics...

Leo DiCaprio Romantic Age Gap Data: UPDATE

Does anyone else teach correlation and regression together at the end of the semester? Here is a treat for you: Updated data on Leonardo DiCaprio, his age, and his romantic partner's age when they started dating. A few years ago, there was a dust-up when a clever Redditor r/TrustLittleBrother realized that DiCaprio had never dated anyone over 25. I blogged about this when it happened. But the old data was from 2022. Inspired by this sleuthing, I created a wee data set, including up-to-date information on his current relationship with Vittoria Ceretti, so your students can suss out the patterns that exist in this data.

Tyler Vigen's Spurious Correlations

Tyler Vigen has has created a long list of easy-to-paste-into-a-powerpoint graphs that illustrate that correlation does not equal causation. For instance, while per capita consumption of cheese and number of people who die by become tangled in their bed sheets may have a strong relationship (r = 0.947091), no one is saying that cheese consumption leads to bed sheet-related death. Although, you could pose The Third Variable question to your students for some of these relationships). Property of Tyler Vigens, http://i.imgur.com/OfQYQW8.png Vigen has also provided a menu of frequently used variables (deaths by tripping, sunlight by state) to help you look for specific examples. This portion is interactive, as you and your students can generate your own graphs. Below, I generated a graph of marriage rates in Pennsylvania and consumption of high fructose corn syrup. Generated at http://www.tylervigen.com/

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