Stats Arts and Crafts...Starts and Crafts?

My friends, winter is coming. Winter in Erie, PA, is no joke, so I've been encouraging my kids to pick up inside hobbies. My youngest is all about flipbooks right now, which inspired me to create my own statsy flipbook:

Which, in turn, inspired me to create a blog post about statsy crafts. Crafts that you can do over Winter break for fun or maybe use as assignments for your students? A DIY Christmas gift for your favorite statistician? 

The flipbook idea is an easy one to implement, as you only need index cards, a binder clip, and a pencil. Actually, many these can be done on the cheap if you have Legos, paper and pen, a log, yarn, baking supplies around. Not free, but not too expensive, either. 

Data visualization via knitting

A knitting-data-visualizer tracked temperatures via a knitting project, seen below. The different colors of yarn represent different temperatures on different days. Here is a full article from Gizmodo, which includes a link where you can purchase supplies to make your own temperature scarf. 

www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/12/meet-the-knitters-who-are-turning-climate-change-data-into-a-fashion-statement

Devon Cantwell is crochet-graphing the air quality in Athens, GA

Decided to make a blanket depicting air quality (using PM2.5) for each day of 2021. @simonwillo is also making one by knitting the data for Athens, GA! This is what the first seven days of PM2.5 levels in SLC for 2021 looks like crocheted. pic.twitter.com/6BAIzuOHCk

— Devon Cantwell (@devon_cantwell) January 14, 2021

Straw and Paper: Regression Lines (Thanks, Jorge Pacherco Jara!)

Jorge created his own illustration of what exactly we mean when we tell our students, "Find the line that best fits the data. He used thread, a straw, and cardboard to make this. How funny (and, maybe, bizarre) would it be to do this to immortalize a correlation plot from your best friend's dissertation? Or your student's first solo-authored paper?

https://twitter.com/jorge_pacheco/status/1327398681239314434?s=19

Galton Boards, rendered in Legos and candy (Thanks, Berna Devezer!).

Berna excels (stats joke?) at inspiring her students to make Galton Boards. Sure, you can drop some bank and get one from Amazon, but why not make your own, using either Legos or candy?

And this is the silly but edible one we made using snickers, reese’s, and m&ms. pic.twitter.com/xtb86fD00U

— Berna Devezer (@zerdeve) October 17, 2019

 

The Central Limit Theorem illustrated using Legos and stop-motion animation (Thanks, Caroline Lear!):

My daughter loved the @FryRsquared Christmas Lectures so much she made this Lego Statistics Animation https://t.co/Q3X2FUYS2m pic.twitter.com/caavfR8ESD

— Caroline Lear (@CarolineLear) May 15, 2020

Stats Snacks

Food is art. Winter break should be dedicated, in part, to baking delicious carbs. Since all of the academics have mastered their sourdough during the first part of the pandemic, maybe it is time to master our royal icing techniques? Check out the Pinterest board full of stats snacks. 

Harnassing the power of the sun to create a graph

Okay. This one might not be the best idea for novice crafters OR any of my fellow Northeasterners. But if you live somewhere with sunshine and feel very industrious, perhaps you will make your own Campbell-Stokes recorder? It uses a magnifying glass and a log to burn out a recording of sunny vs. non-sunny days, down to the hour.

Crossstitch your favorite statistical truism (Thanks, Nicole Dick!).

Nicole owns the Nausicaa Distribution shop over on Esty. In addition to purchasing shirts and posters, you can purchase patterns and kits to crossstich classic statistical phrases.