JAMA visual abstracts: A great way to illustrate basic inferential tests

So, the Journal of the American Medical Academy publishes visual abstracts for some of its research articles. I've written about them before (in particular, this example that illustrates an ANOVA). These abstracts succinctly summarize the research. They feel like an infographic but contain all of the main sections of a research paper. They are great. They quickly relate the most essential parts of a research study and have a home in Intro Stats.

I love them in Psych Stats and use them for several reasons.

1. Using medical examples reminds Psych Stats students that Psych Stats is really Stats Stats, and stats are used everywhere.

2. These are simplified real-world examples. JAMA creates these to help highlight essential facts for journalists and the public, so Intro Stats students are more than ready to take these on.

3. I like to use these as a quick review of some of the inferential tests we teach in stats. This is no guarantee that basic stats were used in the project, but most posters report effect sizes, CIs, etc.

Here are a few examples from psychology-adjacent research:

T-test thinking

https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/visual-abstract-effect-of-values-affirmation-on-reducing-racial-differences-in-adherence-to-high-blood-pressure-medication/

Factorial ANOVA thinking

https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/visual-abstract-outcomes-of-delirium-prevention-program-in-older-adults-after-elective-surgery/

More factorial ANOVA thinking

https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/visual-abstract-in-school-screening-to-identify-evaluate-reduce-depression-among-adolescents/

Repeated measure design

https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/visual-abstract-effect-of-interventions-for-young-people-with-borderline-personality-disorder/

Edited to add (10/10/22):

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2796748?resultClick=1

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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