Skip to main content

Posts

The Society for the Teaching of Psychology: Stats Resources

It occurred to me that I haven't shared my absolute most precious professional development and stats teaching resource in the blog.  That resource is the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. Non-psychologists reading this post, don't stop now. Keep going.   1. There are multiple free e-books available from STP. Some are about teaching, broadly. Some of them have a chapter or two devoted to the teaching of statistics. But there is at least one exclusively devoted to the teaching of statistics,  For the Love of Teaching Undergraduate Statistics . I wrote a chapter in the book, so I'm partial.  2. The STP journal, Teaching of Statistics , includes pedagogy research about the teaching of statistics . Full disclosure: I'm a consulting editor at this journal. 3. If you are a member of STP and come up with an excellent teaching idea or study idea related to teaching statistics to psychology majors, STP has got some money for you . They have several grants, reviewed...

Teaching of Statistics in Psychology: Keynote Address

Hi! Here is all the material I shared at my keynote address at Teaching of Statistics in Psychology. I included three exercises, with slides, you could use to teach confidence intervals, chi-square, and t-tests. Here is the talk:

Dr. Morton Anne Gernsbacher's online Intro to Stats class

Dr. Morton Anne Gernsbacher has freely shared her WHOLE Psychological Statistics class with the world. No paywalls, no log-ins.  Divided up sensibly, including sections on effect sizes and Bayesian. With some assistance from Chelsea Andrews, she created this phenomenal resource for all of us to use. While I'm focusing on her stats class, be sure to check out her amazing Research Methods and Psychological Effects of the Internet courses. DO NOTE: I'm not primarily recommending this directly as a resource as a class for students. I'm recommending it to you, instructors, as a source of great, free statistical readings and teaching ideas that you could incorporate into your own classes. This is especially helpful if you are trying to teach without a textbook or if you are just looking for additional ways of explaining tough statistical concepts to your students. Here are a few things she shares that you could use: 1. Plenty of guidance for teaching via Excel/Google Sheets/App...

Explaining log v. linear data visualization, using customizable COVID data charts

I've blogged about Our World in Data before. There is a lot to appreciate at this webiste, but I would like to draw your attention to the wealth of interactive COVID visualizations you can create. Many of these visualizations include a toggle button that changes the graph from a logarithmic graph to a linear graph. Which really, really helps illustrate log data transformations to our novice statisticians. There have been occasional dust-ups over the last year with people not understanding the difference  or  being unfamiliar with log transformations , or graphs not being appropriately labeled.  I also like this example because most of my examples skew towards American content, but this data visualization tool lets you select from many countries .  ANDPLUSALSO: There is data to be had at the website. Data for days!

Seven mini-stats lessons, crammed into nine minutes.

 I found this Tweet, which leads to a brief report on BBC. A recent report from the World Obesity Federation shows COVID death rates are higher in countries where more than half the population is overweight. Cause and effect, or bad statistics? @TimHarford and @d_spiegel explore - with some maths from me. You can listen on @BBCSounds https://t.co/hevepmz8RC — stuart mcdonald (@ActuaryByDay) March 14, 2021 The BBC has a show called "More or Less," and they explained a recent research finding connecting obesity to COVID 19 deaths.  Here is the original research study . Here is a pop treatment of the original study . For more stats news, you can follow  "More or Less" on Twitter . And they cram, like, a half dozen lessons in this story. It is amazing. I've tried to highlight some of the topics touched upon in this story. How can you use it in class? I think it would be a good final exam question. You could have your students listen to the story, and highlight ...

Statsystem Stat Memes

Go follow Statsystem ( Facebook , Instagram ). They are a smarty pants who dreams and thinks in stats memes. I know these are silly and hilarious and fun. I think these are good for a nerd chuckle for ourselves. And who doesn't need more nerd chuckles? I also think these are light, funny, accessible ways to back up a more complex stats lesson with a succinct meme that conveys the guts of a lesson.  See: Power Regression: Central Limit Theorem: T-tests: And don't forget the big picture:

One sample t-tests, puppies, real data.

This teaching example: 1. Is psychology research. 2. Features the actual data from the generous and helpful Dr. Bray . 3. Features GIFs. EVERYTHING is better with GIFs. 4. Includes puppies. 5. Includes a good ol' Psych Statistics standard: The one-sample t-test. Okay, get ready. I first learned about Dr. Emily Bray's dog cognition research via Twitter . Never let it be said that good things don't happen on Twitter. Occasionally.  1 Dogs are known for their ability to cooperate with humans and read our social cues. But are these skills biologically prepared? To find out, we tested 375 puppies at 8.5 weeks on 4 social cognition tasks (task descriptions: https://t.co/aETequNBce ) #AnimBehav2021 #Cognition pic.twitter.com/7vN2lp82Dp — Emily Bray (@DrEmilyBray) January 27, 2021 This is such a helpful way to share your research. This example works for your Cognitive or RM classes as well as your stats class, since this thread illustrates not just her findings but her methods. T...