Spring 2020 Syllabuses

Hi, all-

Happy 400th blog post to me!

Anyway, here and there, people request my syllabuses. I'm happy to share them. I'm also sort of proud to share them this semester. Per ideas I've seen circulating on Twitter and at conferences, I've made three big changes this year:

1. I made them more visually appealing. Not just for aesthetic's sake, though, but to better organize information.
2. I've included a section that features a) hints for success from past students and b) my hints for success/extra resources.
3. I more directly addressed the fact that our students can face crises during the semester and I am here to help them with their problems. I also included a list of additional resources for assisting students.

Thank you to everyone who has every shared their good ideas for improving our syllabuses.

Anyway, here are my Honors Psych Stats syllabus and my Online Psych Stats syllabus.

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.

Logical Fallacy Ref Meme

So, I love me some good statsy memes. They make a brief, important point that sticks in the heads of students. I've recently learned of the Logical Fallacy Ref meme. Here are a couple that apply to stats class:

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