A joke to help in a discussion of how a well designed experiment helps to reduce the variance of the response variable. The Joke was written by Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University) in Februrary 2021.
Note - when the joke is spoken there is no need to say the parenthetical part - simply pronounce the word "variants" to sound like "variance".
A poem to help in discussing matched-pair designs. UTEP Professor Larry Lesser wrote this poem on February 1, 2021, using end-rhyme couplets to convey (literally and figuratively) tradeoffs of a design with matched pairs. Note that the rhymes are not always perfect, a reflection of how it can be impossible to match subjects perfectly. Also note how the would-be final couplet is ruined by losing its second line, just as you effectively lose two subjects when one subject in a pair chooses to drop out of your study.
A cartoon that can be used to motivate the importance of statistics in making decisions. The cartoon was used in the January 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Douglas VanDerwerken, an instructor at the United States Naval Academy. The cartoon was drawn by British cartoonist John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University.
A song providing an overview of Introductory Statistics with lyrics written by Michael Posner of Villanova University who also performs the song on the accompanying MP3 audio file. The song is a parody of the 2010 hit "Cooler Than Me" by Mike Posner. The song is also the sound track on the corresponding video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rKQtDb4VjU The video and song were the grand prize winner of the CAUSE 2013 A-Mu-sing competition. Free for use in nonprofit education applications.
A joke to facilitate discussion of random assignment in an experiment. The joke was written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso in May, 2020.
A cartoon that can be used in discussing the Placebo effect. The cartoon appeared as number 1526 (May, 2015) in the web comic xkcd by Randell Patrick Munroe (http://www.xkcd.com/1526/).
A joke to use in presentations about the importance of control and replication in experimentation. The joke was written by Larry Lesser (The University of Texas at El Paso) and Dennis Pearl (Penn State University) in March 2020.
A joke to help in discussions of the value of random assignment in experiments and in discussing pedagogical options. The joke was written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso in February 2020.
A joke to help discuss how random assignment is an unbiased experimental method. The joke was written by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University in February 2020.
A poem written in 2019 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso to introduce the concept of Latin squares. Be prepared to explain the meaning of the word “Latinx” in case some students don’t recognize it. The poem is part of a collection of 8 poems published with commentary in the January 2020 issue of Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.