A 2020 cartoon illustrating the idea of heteroscedasticity (non-constant variance) that might be used to start a discussion on the important of the constant variance of errors in making inferences from regression models. The cartoon was used in a 2021 Teaching Statistics paper "Statistical edutainment that lines up and fits," by Dennis Pearl from Penn State University and Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso.
Regression to the Mean is a 2009 poem by Andrew Porter of Wirral, England. The poem can be used in teaching about regression to the mean and the regression fallacy. Free for use in non-profit educational settings. A video featuring the poem being read aloud is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D66I36fksZA
A quick "hands on" activity for an in-class experience of data collection as a simple linear regression example where students predict the time needed for a human chain of hand squeezes to make a full circuit as a function of number of people in the chain. The lesson plan secondary school lesson plan adapted from Cynthia Lanius’ hand squeeze activity by Bo Brawner at Tarleton State University.
A pun to familiarize students with Anscombe's Quartet - the group of 4 data sets with the same means, standard deviations, correlations, and regression lines for X and Y that were produced by British statistician Frank Anscombe in a 1973 paper in the American Statistician. The joke was written in 2016 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. This joke should be used in a written form since students will not "get" the joke if they have never heard of Anscombe's Quartet - the value for teaching coming from having them look it up. Alternatively, it can be used in an oral presentation following an activity on this topic.
A cartoon designed to support a discussion of using dummy variables to code for categories of a categorical variable in a regression model (e.g. 5 are needed when there are 6 categories). The cartoon was used in the February 2020 CAUSE cartoon caption contest and the winning caption was written by Dominic Matriccino, a student at the University of Virginia. 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 second winner in the February 2020 contest was "The grass really is greener on the homogeneity side," written by Jennifer Ann Morrow, an instructor from University of Tennessee. Jennifer's cartoon caption can be used in discussing the importance of within-group variability in judging differences between groups and the difficulty when the groups being compared have different levels of variability.
A cartoon that can be used for discussing the traditional theme of "Correlation does not imply Causation" as well as what observational evidence does provide the most convincing evidence of a causal relationship. The cartoon was used in the June 2019 CAUSE cartoon caption contest. 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 cartoon suitable for use in discussing situations where the explanatory variable has essentially no predictive power (whether the variables have a statistically significant relationship or not). The cartoon is number 1725 (August, 2016) 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 use in teaching the idea that association does not imply causation. The cartoon is number 552 (March, 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 t-shirt with this cartoon is also available for sale at xkcd.com.