The thing about my way of teaching stats is that my cool, novel examples get old really fast. Like, pop culture is on a thirty-day cycle. Anyway, YEARS ago, 2014 to be exact, I blogged about illustrating bimodal data distributions using baby name data from the Social Security Administration. Specifically, when an older name comes back into vogue, it has a bimodal distribution when you plot time on the X axis. I stand by this example. However, all of the data illustrations come from 2014. When our traditionally aged college students were 6 or 7. Which makes this example feel a little stale. However, here is some data, courtesy of Redditor fevaah , showing old names that are back in vogue through 2025 ! And Eleanor, Violet, Nora, and Hazel are here, illustrating bimodal distributions for a new generation. If you used my old baby-name data, this is a quick, easy refresh for your lectures (or a fun new addition if you didn't). If this idea was help...
This post isn't a specific lesson idea, but a resource that will delight your statsy brain. We Have The Data on Instagram ( and elsewhere ) is an account that shares interesting data, data in a variety of formats and from a variety of sources about all sorts of topics. For example: This is anti-brain rot for your IG feed. I also think there are countless classroom examples embedded in the content they share, especially as this account shares specific data points that are data that don't feel like data (like the difference in what 10.2 million will get you in two different parts of the country). I think they could be used in class to get your students to think more like a statistician. Enjoy. If this idea was helpful, you'll probably enjoy my textbook, Psychological Statistics for Everyone . It's basically this blog, but organized into a semester.