Factorial ANOVA, Tai Chi, and the importance of base rates

I love JAMA Visual Abstracts. I have blogged about them before. They are great ways to illustrate 1) basic, intro stats topics, 2) excellent sci-comm, and 3) psych-adjacent medical examples.

I learned about a recent JAMA publication on NPR (which you could play for your students). It compared blood pressure in people who were in a Tai Chi exercise condition versus an aerobic exercise condition:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2814872

Here are some ways you could use it in class:

1. Simple factorial ANOVA research design. Two groups with a repeated measure design makes me think "factorial ANOVA."

I have not, but it would be easy to make a 2 x 2 bar graph with this data (the actual data is embargoed until December).

2. Active control group: The control group wasn't sitting on a couch. The control group was doing aerobic activities.

3. Lots of outcomes and potential for significance (and Type II error): The main thrust of this paper is all about blood pressure. But they collected a crap low of other data as well. Many didn't pan out (which they own and share in their supplemental material).

4. Making the best data viz choice: There are no data image police but maybe there should be. Why not show this as jitter plots (to capture variability)

5. Cross-cultural health psychology: Not all of your examples have to be pure psychology examples. This one, in particular, demonstrates a) health psychology and b) the importance of cross-cultural research in studying interventions rooted in culture (like Tai Chi in China).

6. The importance of base-rates: Base-rate, pre-study data is important when telling the difference between two groups, and they collected that data here:

ALSO: If you like this example, imagine a whole textbook filled with these sorts of examples. A textbook written by ME, published by WW Norton, and available for Spring 25 adoptions. If you want more information, sign up for my mailing list.

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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