This blog post contains one small analogy for explaining family-wise error to your students. I was making French toast for dinner the other night.  While I was measuring out cinnamon, I realized using one tablespoon instead of three teaspoons to avoid measuring errors is sort of like using a one-way ANOVA with three levels instead of doing three  t  tests to avoid Type I error.   Stick with me here. If I were to use three teaspoons to measure out an ingredient, there is a chance I could make a mistake three times. Three opportunities for air pockets. Three opportunities to not perfectly level out my ingredient. Meanwhile, if I just use one tablespoon, I will only risk the error associated with using a measuring spoon once.  Similarly, every time we use NHST, we accept 5% Type I error (well, if you are a psychologist and using the 5% gold standard, but I digress). Using three tests ( t tests) when we could use one (ANOVA) will increase the risk of a false positi...

This YouGov data asked Americans to rate how much they enjoy a variety of summer activities. They graphed out the percentage of people, divided by demographics, who indicated that they like or love a summer activity. One of the demographics they used was age. Which makes me feel seen, and I can already imagine how I will poke fun at myself, a 46-year-old who hates outdoor sports. More  pedagogically, I can use this data when introducing paired  t -tests. Specifically, I can get them to ponder this data and think about why  the age differences exist.   Here is the data visualization for activities where there is a big age gap in enjoyment: Here is the data visualization for activities where there is not a big age difference: I think they really missed out by not including birdwatching on this list. I'm 46 and I hecking love it.  I could also see this as an example in a Developmental or Psychology of Aging course. What is driving the differences between older...

This summer, the Psi Chi Journal of Psychology Research published  Rouse, Russel, and Campbell's Beyond the textbook: Psi Chi Journal articles in introductory psychology courses. It is a curated list of paywall-free Psi Chi articles, mostly with student co-authors, that are peer-reviewed and of an appropriate writing level and length to use in an Introduction to Psychology course. The authors provide the following information for each of the articles: In addition to being appropriate for Into Psych, these articles are also perfect for Intro Stats. In my classes, I emphasize the ability to read and write simple result sections. One way I would review this skill is by showing my students Results sections from published research and asking them to identify the test statistics, effect size, and other relevant information. This selection of articles features clear and concise results sections for t -tests, ANOVA, factorial ANOVA, regression, and correlation. I created a spreadsheet...