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...