Roeder, writing for fivethirtyeight.com, has come up with a new way to illustrate the Central Limit Theorem. And it uses Plinko, the beloved The Price is Right game! http://www.businessinsider.com/price-is-right-contestant-plinko-record-2017-5 Well, a variation upon Plinko, featured on the NBC game show The Wall. Their Plinko is much larger and more dramatic and the slots at the bottom go up to $1 million. See below. http://selenahughes.com/1553-2/ How does CLT come into play? Well, the ball is randomly thrown down The Wall. And people jump around and hope for certain outcomes. But what outcome is most likely over time? For the pattern of ending positions to conform to the normal curve. Which it did. See below. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-if-god-were-a-giant-game-of-plinko/ The article itself gets pretty spiritual as the author starts talking about randomness, of the show and of life. You can steal, but cite, the game show as example of CLT as he ...

Bad Math with Drawings has graced us with statistical funnies before (scroll down for the causality coefficient ). Here is another one, a quick guide pointing out how easy it is to lie with descriptive statistics. Here are two of the examples, there are plenty more at Math With Bad Drawings. https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/07/13/why-not-to-trust-statistics/ https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/07/13/why-not-to-trust-statistics/

In the past, I've used fake data based on real research to create stats class examples. Baby names, NICUs, and paired t-test . Pain, surgical recovery, and ANOVA . Today, I've decided to use fake data and fake research to create a real example for teaching one-sample t-test. It uses  this research report from The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/toddler-scientists-finally-determine-number-of-peas-tha-1820347088 In this press release, the baby scientists claim that the belief that a baby could only smash four peas into their ear canal were false. Based upon new research recommendations, that number has been revised to six. Which sure sounds like a one-sample t-test to me. Four is the mu assumed true based upon previous baby ear research. And the sample data had a mean of 6, and this was statistically significant. Here is some dummy data that I created that replicates these findings, when mu/test value is set to 4. : 5.00 6.00 7.00 6.00 5.00 6.00 6.00 5.0...

The sum of the parts is greater than the whole? Nathan Yau's article on creating readable, useful graphs   is a perfectly reasonable list of how to create a proper graph. The content is sound. So, that's good. However, the accompanying images and captions are hilarious. They will show your students how to make not-awful charts.

This example gets students thinking about how we operationalize variables. Psychologists operationalize a lot of abstract stuff. Intelligence. Grit. But what about something that seems more firmly grounded and countable, like whether or not a crime meets the criteria for a a mass shooting? How do we define mass shooting? As shared in this article by Chris Wilson for Time Magazine , the official definition is 1) three or more people 2) killed in a public setting. That is per the current federal definition of a mass shooting . But that isn't universally excepted by media outlets. The article shares different metrics used for identifying a mass shooting, depending on what source is being used. Whether or not to include a dead shooter towards the total number killed. Whether or not the victims were randomly selected. I think the most glaring example from the article has to do with the difference that this definition makes on mass shooting counts: You could also discuss wi...

So, I love me some good statsy memes. They make a brief, important point that sticks in the heads of students. I've recently learned of the Logical Fallacy Ref meme. Here are a couple that apply to stats class:

So, this checks off a couple of my favorite requisites for a good teaching example: You can personalize it, it is contemporary and applicable, it illustrates a few different sorts of statistics.  Climate Central wrote this article about first frost dates, and how those dates, and an increasing number of frost-free days, create longer growing seasons.  The overall article is about how frosty the US is becoming as the Earth warms. They provide data about the first frost in a number of US cities. It even lists my childhood hometown of Altoona, PA, so I think there is a pretty large selection of cities to choose from. Below, I've included the screen grab for my current home, and the home of Gannon University, Erie, PA. The first frost date is illustrated with a line chart, but the chart also includes the regression line. Data for frosty, chilly Erie, PA The article also presents a chart that shows how frost is related to the length of the growing season in t...

A database codebook is the documentation of all of the data entry rules and coding schemes used in a given database. And code books usually contain examples of every kind of variable and level of measurement you need to teach your students during the first two weeks of Intro Stats. You can use any code book from any database relevant to your own scholarship as an example in class. Or perhaps you can find a code book particularly relevant to the students or majors you are teaching. Here, I will describe how to use Global Terrorism Database ’s code book  for this purpose. The Global Terrorism Database is housed at the University of Maryland and has been tracking national and international terrorism since 1970 and has collected information on  over 170, 000 attacks. So, the database in and of itself could be useful in class. But, I will focus on just the code book for now, as I think this example cuts across disciplines and interests as all of our students are aware of terroris...

I love good graphic design and lists. This guide to spotting bad science embraces both. And many of the science of bad science are statistical in nature, or involve sketchy methods. Honestly, this could be easily turned into a  homework assignment for research evaluation. This comes from the Compound Interest ( @compoundchem ), which has all sorts of beautiful visualizations of chemistry topics, if that is your jam. 

Elahe Izadi, writing for The Washington Post, shared polling data from the 1960s. The data focused on public opinion about different aspects of the civil rights movement (March on Washington, freedom riders, etc.). The old data was used to draw parallels between the mixed support for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the mixed support for current civil rights protests, specifically, Black Lives Matter. Here is the  Washington  Post  story on the polling data, the civil rights movement, and Black Lives Matter. The story is the source of all the visualizations contained below. H ere is the original polling data . https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2016/04/2300-galluppoll1961-1024x983.jpg&w=1484 https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2016/04/2300-galluppoll1963-1024x528.jpg&w=1484 I think this is timely data. And...

Nathan Yau , writing for Flowing Data , provides a good example of correlation, median, and correlation not equaling causation in his story, " Divorce and Occupation ". Yau looked at the relationship between occupation and divorce in a few ways. He used one of variation upon the violin plot to illustrate how each occupation's divorce rate falls around the median divorce rate. Who has the lowest rate? Actuaries. They really do know how to mitigate risk. You could also discuss why median divorce rate is provided instead of mean divorce rate. Again, the actuaries deserve attention as they probably would throw off the mean. https://flowingdata.com/2017/07/25/divorce-and-occupation/ He also looked at  how salary was related to divorce, and this can be used as a good example of a linear relationship: The more money you make, the lower your chances for divorce. And an intuitive exception to that trend? Clergy members.  https://flowingdata.com/2017/07/25/divorce...

So, I am very pro-science, but I have a soft spot in my heart for medical research that improves medical outcomes without actually requiring medicine, expensive interventions, etc. And after spending a week in the NICU with my youngest, I'm doubly fond of a way of helping the littlest and most vulnerable among us. One example of such was published in the journal Pediatrics and written up by NPR . In this case, they found that fewer mistakes are made when not-yet-named NICU babies are given more distinct rather than less distinct temporary names. The unnamed baby issues is an issue in the NICU, as babies can be born very early or under challenging circumstances, and the babies' parents aren't ready to name their kids yet. Traditionally, hospitals would use the naming convention "BabyBoy Hartnett" but several started using "JessicasBoy Hartnett" as part of this intervention. So, distinct first and last names instead of just last names. They measured patie...

The Hedonometer measures the overall happiness of Tweets on Twitter. It provides a simple, engaging example for  Intro Stats since the data is graphed over time, color-coded for the day of the week, and interactive. I think it could also be a much deeper example for a Research Methods class as the " About " section of the website reads like a journal article methods section, in so much that the Hedonometer creators describe their entire process for rating Tweets. This is what the basic table looks like. You can drill into the data by picking a year or a day of the week to highlight. You can also use the sliding scale along the bottom to specify a time period. The website is also kept very, very up to date, so it is also a very topical resource. Data for white supremacy attack in VA In the pages "About" section, they address many methodological questions your students might raise about this tool. It is a good example for the process researchers go ...