A song to aid in the discussion of the meaning and interpretation of p-values and type I errors. The song's lyrics were written in 2017 by Lawrence Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso and may be sung to the tune of the 1977 Bee Gees Grammy winning hit "Stayin' Alive." The audio recording was produced by Nicolas Acedo with vocals by Erika Araujo, both students in the Commercial Music Program at The University of Texas at El Paso.
A song satirizing the use of fixed significance level hypothesis testing. The song was written by Dennis K Pearl from Penn State University. Lyrics may be sung to the tune of the Beatles 1967 hit "When I'm Sixty-Four." (Paul McCartney wrote the song in 1958). The audio recording was produced by Nicolas Acedo with vocals by Alejandra Nunez Vargas, both students in the Commercial Music Program at The University of Texas at El Paso.
A song to introduce the basic idea of using simulation to calculate a P-value for a randomization test (by simulating lots of group assignments and seeing what proportion of them give more extreme test statistics than observed with the actual group assignments). The lyrics were written in November 2018 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso and Dennis Pearl from Penn State University. May be sung to the tune of the 1980 number #1 song “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang. Audio of the parody was produced and sung by students in the commercial music program of The University of Teas at El Paso.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, workshops were held over a three-year period, each with about twenty participants nearly equally divided between mathematics educators and statisticians. In these exchanges the mathematics educators presented honest assessments of the status of mathematics education research (both its strengths and its weaknesses), and the statisticians provided insights into modern statistical methods that could be more widely used in such research. The discussions led to an outline of guidelines for evaluating and reporting mathematics education research, which were molded into the current report. The purpose of the reporting guidelines is to foster the development of a stronger foundation of research in mathematics education, one that will be scientific, cumulative, interconnected, and intertwined with teaching practice. The guidelines are built around a model involving five key components of a high-quality research program: generating ideas, framing those ideas in a research setting, examining the research questions in small studies, generalizing the results in larger and more refined studies, and extending the results over time and location. Any single research project may have only one or two of these components, but such projects should link to others so that a viable research program that will be interconnected and cumulative can be identified and used to effect improvements in both teaching practice and future research. The guidelines provide details that are essential for these linkages to occur. Three appendices provide background material dealing with (a) a model for research in mathematics education in light of a medical model for clinical trials; (b) technical issues of measurement, unit of randomization, experiments vs. observations, and gain scores as they relate to scientifically based research; and (c) critical areas for cooperation between statistics and mathematics education research, including qualitative vs. quantitative research, educating graduate students and keeping mathematics education faculty current in education research, statistics practices and methodologies, and building partnerships and collaboratives.
A song about the different assumptions needed for parametric statistical methods and the importance of checking how well they hold and what effect they may have on the results and conclusions. The lyrics were written in 2017 by Dennis K. Pearl from Penn State University and may be sung to the tune of "Every Breath You Take" written by Sting and made popular by The Police on their 1983 album "Synchronicity." Audio of the parody was produced and sung by students in the commercial music program of The University of Teas at El Paso.
This limerick was written by Dr. Nyaradzo Mvududu of the Seattle Pacific University School of Education. The poem was given an honorable mention in the 2007 A-Mu-sing competition.
A cartoon suitable for use in discussing the interpretation of p-values of different levels. The cartoon is number 1478 (January, 2015) from the webcomic series at xkcd.com created by Randall Munroe. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites under a creative commons attribution-non-commercial 2.5 license.
A cartoon suitable for use in teaching ideas about independence and conditional probability. The cartoon is number 795 (September, 2010) from the webcomic series at xkcd.com created by Randall Munroe. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites under a creative commons attribution-non-commercial 2.5 license.
A cartoon suitable for a course website that makes use of a boxplot to display an outlier and also uses the term "statistically significant" in its punch line. The cartoon is number 539 (February, 2009) from the webcomic series at xkcd.com created by Randall Munroe. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites under a creative commons attribution-non-commercial 2.5 license.
A cartoon suitable for use in teaching about the idea of a falsifiable hypothesis. The cartoon is number 2078 (November, 2018) from the webcomic series at xkcd.com created by Randall Munroe. Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites under a creative commons attribution-non-commercial 2.5 license.