Correlation example: Taco Bell and mortality by state...don't run for the border!

Many thanks to my colleague, Andrew Caswell, for sharing this Reddit post with me:

Scatter plot of the relationship between number of Taco Bells and mortality rate, by state.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/s75sm7/oc_us_life_expectancy_vs_of_taco_bell_locations/

So, this alone is an excellent example of correlation and the third variable problem. But...more delightfully, the Redditor who created this graph also shared where he found this data (https://www.nicerx.com/fast-food-capitals/, https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/life-expectancy-by-state).

BETTER STILL: I downloaded and organized all of the fast-food data and mortality data and put it in one spreadsheet for you all. Do All The Correlations! Teach your students about Bonferroni corrections! Figure out the fast-food restaurant that correlates the most strongly with mortality!

PS: Did you know that there is an option to download data from a website in Excel?

The fast-food data was presented in an embedded, scrolly table, and that Excel option made it easy-peasy to download.

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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