A fast, interactive example for explaining what we mean when we talk about "training" AI/ML

When I teach regression, I touch on AI/Machine Learning. Because it is fancy regression and ties classroom lessons to real life.

During discussions about AI/ML, we often talk about "training" computers to look for something by feeding computers data. Which is slightly abstract. And a bit boring, if you are just talking about a ton of spreadsheets.

As an alternative to boring, I propose you ask your students to help train Google's computers to recognize doodles.

Visit this website, and a prompt flashes on your screen:

You draw the prompt (I used my touchscreen), and Google tries to guess what you drew. Here is my half-done wine glass. Google guessed what it was.

The website includes additional information on the data that has already been collected.

For every one of the doodles above, you can click through and look at all the ones created in response to each prompt. SO MUCH INFORMATION.

If you would like, you can also show your students this explainer video.

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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