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...
Gleaned from multiple sources (FB, Pinterest, Twitter, none of these belong to me, etc.). Remember, if your students can explain why a stats funny is funny, they are demonstrating statistical knowledge. I like to ask students to explain the humor in such examples for extra credit points (see below for an example from my FA14 final exam). Using xkcd.com for bonus points/assessing if students understand that correlation =/= causation What are the numerical thresholds for probability? How does this refer to alpha? What type of error is being described, Type I or Type II? What measure of central tendency is being described? Dilbert: http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Kill%20Anyone Sampling, CLT http://foulmouthedbaker.com/2013/10/03/graphs-belong-on-cakes/ Because control vs. sample, standard deviations, normal curves. Also,"skewed" pun. If you go to the original website , the story behind this cakes has to do w...