Resource Library

A song about examining the assumptions in statistical procedures especially dealing with skewed distributions. The lyrics were written by Robert Carver of Stonehill College and were awarded second place in the song category of the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. The song is a parody of the 1961 classic pop song "Runaround Sue" written by Ernie Maresca and Dion DiMucci and sung by Dion backed by the vocal group, The Del-Satins. Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.

A Haiku about the meaning of significance by Dr. Nyaradzo Mvududu of the Seattle Pacific University School of Education. The poem was awarded a tie for second place in the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition.

A poem useful in teaching aspects about hypothesis testing, especially the caveat that unimportant differences may be deemed significant with a large sample size. The poem was written by Mariam Hermiz, a student at University of Toronto, Mississauga in Fall 2010 as part of an assignment in a biometrics class taught by Helene Wagner. The poem was awarded first place in the poetry category of the 2011 CAUSE A-Mu-sing contest.

Even trained statisticians often fail to appreciate the extent to which statistics are vitiated by the unrecorded assumptions of their interpreters is a quote by Irish playwright George Benard Shaw (1856 - 1950). The quote may be found in the author's preface to his 1906 play "The Doctor's Dilemma", that contains an essay on his views of statistics and quantitative literacy amongst the public.

A game to aid in teaching experimental design and significance testing (especially one sample, two sample, and matched pair situations). Tangrams are puzzles in which a person is expected to place geometrically shaped pieces into a particular design. The on-line Tangram Game provides students the opportunity to design many versions of the original game in order to test which variables have the largest effect on game completion time. A full set of student and instructor materials are available and were created by Kevin Comiskey (West Point), Rod Sturdivant (Ohio State University) and Shonda Kuiper (Grinnell College) as part of the Stat2Labs collection.

This is my take on the ubiquitous M&Ms counting activity. Each student records the color proportions in a fun-size bag of M&Ms. We pool the class data and run a Chi-Square goodness-of-fit test to determine whether or not the color proportions match those claimed on the manufacturer's website. We consistently find that the proportions do not match. The blue M&Ms, in particular, are underrepresented. This activity also includes a review of the 1-proportion z confidence interval.

Song about the chi-square goodness-of-fit test. May be sung to the tune of James Rado, Gerome Ragni, and Gai MacDermot's 1969 song "Aquarius" from the musical "Hair." Lyrics by Lawrence Mark Lesser. Musical accompaniment realization are by Joshua Lintz and vocals are by Mariana Sandoval from University of Texas at El Paso.

Probability is a 2 minute 14 second video that can be used in discussing the probability of rare events (e.g. how many consecutive times must a coin land heads before you question whether it is a fair coin?). The video was written, shot, and edited by Sam Rapien in 2007. The music is by Brett Musil and Sam Rapien and the single cast member is Jon Anderson. Mr. Rapien made this video while a graduate student in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Outliers is a triangular shaped poem written in 2008 by Jacqueline Shaffer (1980 - ) of California State University, East Bay. The poem focuses on the issue that outliers should not be removed from a data set without a reason.

Song about the need to show a significant result in order to have a manuscript published. May be sung to the tune of Robert Feldman, Gerald Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer's 1963 song "My Boyfriend's Back," popularized by The Angels. Lyrics by Marc Coram and Matthew Finkelman (December, 2003). This song is part of the "Stanford Statistics Songbook" found at www.bscb.cornell.edu/~hooker/StanfordStatisticsSongbook.pdf Free to use for non-commercial educational purposes. Contact author to use in publications or for commercial purposes. Musical accompaniment realization and vocals are by Joshua Lintz from University of Texas at El Paso.