Resource Library

A joke written by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso to highlight the difference between concepts of central tendency and variation.

A cartoon to be used for discussing how outliers can have an influential effect on statistics. The cartoon was used in the June 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Albert Koenig, a student at Belgrade High School. The drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. Other ideas for using this cartoon in teaching include focusing on assumptions (do we really know the team with the tallest player is ahead?); the selection of the best measure to summarize data (mean, median, or maximum in this case); or on the importance of variability in understanding data.

This complete lesson plan, which includes assessments, is based upon a data set partially discussed in the article "Female Hurricanes are Deadlier than Male Hurricanes." The data set contains archival data on actual fatalities caused by hurricanes in the United States between 1950 and 2012. Students analyze and explore this hurricane data in order to formulate a question, design and implement a plan to collect data, analyze the data by measures and graphs, and interpret the results in the context of the original question.

A joke that can be used in discussing standard scores (e.g. the age of the longest lived horse was about 9 standard deviations above the average lifespan) and how they are a unites measurement. The joke was written by Dennis K. Pearl from Penn State University.

A song about the use of the range to measure variation. The song may be sung to the tune of "Home on the range" the classic western song based on a poem by Brewster Higley of Smith county Kansas published in 1873 and music by Texas composer David Guion. The lyrics for this parody were written by Professor Lawrence Lesser of The University of Texas at El Paso.

A joke for use in discussing measures of central tendency. The joke was written by Jackie Bryce Miller, University of Michigan and won third place in the 2015 A-Mu-Sing competition.

A video to dispel myths about Statistics and excite students early in a course. The lyrics and video were created by Scott Crawford from the University of Wyoming. The music is from the 2000 song "Where Are You, Christmas? " written by James Horner and Will Jennings for the movie "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". The video received an honorable mention in the video category of the 2013 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. Free for non-profit use in classroom and course website applications.

A video to teach about the central limit theorem and various issues in one-sample hypothesis testing. The lyrics and video were created by Scott Crawford from the University of Wyoming. The music is from the 1988 song "I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)" by the Scottish band The Proclaimers. The video took second place in the video category of the 2013 CAUSE A-Mu-sing competition. Free for non-profit use in classroom and course website applications.

A cartoon to teach about the average and about positive versus negative skew. The cartoon was created by Diane L. Evans from Rose-Human Institute of Technology and won an honorable mention in the CAUSE 2013 A-Mu-sing contest.

I don't like the label big data", because that suggests the key measure is how many bits you have available to use. But who cares how much data you have? With too little data, you won't be able to make any conclusions that you trust. With loads of data you will find relationships that aren't real. ... Big data isn't about bits, it's about talent." This is a quote by ZestFinance.com CEO and former Google VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill (1970 -). The quote appeared in his May 1, 2012 blog at Forbes.com.