The thing about my way of teaching stats is that my cool, novel examples get old really fast. Like, pop culture is on a thirty-day cycle. Anyway, YEARS ago, 2014 to be exact, I blogged about illustrating bimodal data distributions using baby name data from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, when an older name comes back into vogue, it has a bimodal distribution when you plot time on the X axis. I stand by this example. However, all of the data illustrations come from 2014. When our traditionally aged college students were 6 or 7. Which makes this example feel a little stale. However, here is some data, courtesy of Redditor fevaah , showing old names that are back in vogue through 2025 ! And Eleanor, Violet, Nora, and Hazel are here, illustrating bimodal distributions for a new generation. If you used my old baby-name data, this is a quick, easy refresh for your lectures (or a fun new addition if you didn't). If this idea was help...
No, Wikipedia isn't a proper resource for our students to cite. But it is not without merit.
For example, I think the information it provides on Anscombe's quartet is very useful. This example provides four data distributions. For each, the means and variances for both the X and Y variables are identical. The correlations between X and Y, and the regression lines, are also identical.
I have seen variations upon this in textbooks over the years, but typically they just show how different distributions can have the same mean and standard deviation. I think this example goes the extra mile by including r and the regression line.
How to use in class:
-Graphs aren't for babies. They can be an essential part of understanding your data.
-Outliers are bad!
-The original data is also included at the Wikipedia entry if you would like your students to create these graphs in class.
For example, I think the information it provides on Anscombe's quartet is very useful. This example provides four data distributions. For each, the means and variances for both the X and Y variables are identical. The correlations between X and Y, and the regression lines, are also identical.
 |
| This is the descriptive/inferential data that applies to each of the four graphs |
How to use in class:
-Graphs aren't for babies. They can be an essential part of understanding your data.
-Outliers are bad!
-The original data is also included at the Wikipedia entry if you would like your students to create these graphs in class.