These three haikus were written as part of an activity in Paul Roback's introductory statistics class at St. Olaf College in February, 2009 ("World of chaos" by Carolyn Raitt; "Reality bites" by Hannah Johnson; "Is it you or me" by Nicole Villa). As a collection, the haikus won first place in the poetry category of the 2009 A-Mu-sing competition. The entire class is shown in this picture: http://www.causeweb.org/resources/fun/pics/Roback_class.jpg
A joke about the economic value of a degree in the applied mathematical sciences compared to a more theoretical degree.
A cartoon to teach about one difficulty in conducting education research arising from problems in obtaining reliable and valid endpoints. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University). Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
A cartoon to teach about one difficulty in conducting medical research compared to education research arising from problems in obtaining informed consent from subjects. Cartoon by John Landers (www.landers.co.uk) based on an idea from Dennis Pearl (The Ohio State University). Free to use in the classroom and on course web sites.
Song advocating a preference for Bayesian inferential procedures. May sing to the tune of Neil Diamond's 1966 song "I'm a Believer" made popular by the Monkees. Lyrics by Bradley Carlin (2002). Free to use for non-commercial educational purposes. Contact author to use in publications or for commercial purposes. Accompanying musical track was recorded Sunday September 16, 2002. The lyrics were written by Brad for the Valencia 7 conference, Tenerife, Spain, June 2002;and was first performed there by the Bayesian Band (Brad Carlin, Mark Glickman, and David Heckerman). The lyrics may be found in volume 37, issue 1 of "IMS Bulletin" and in the "Bayesian Songbook" (www.biostat.umn.edu/~brad/cabaret.html).
Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one, a quote by French Philosopher Francois-Marie Arouet (1694 - 1778), more commonly known by his pen name Voltaire. The quote appeared in a letter to Frederick II of Prussia in 1767.
Hiawatha Designs an Experiment is a poem by English statistician Sir Maurice George Kendall (1907 - 1983). The poem can be used in teaching about the trade-off between reliability and bias found in many inference problems and in designing experiments and interpreting the results of an ANOVA. The poem was originally published in "The American Statistician" December, 1959.
Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us something new: it alone can give us certainty. A quote from French mathematician and physicist Jules Henri Poincare (1854 - 1912) found in "The Foundations of Science", page 127, The Science Press, 1913. The quote also appears in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.
It is better to be satisfied with probabilities than to demand impossibilities and starve. A quote attributed to German philosopher, poet, and dramatist Friedrich Schiller (1759 - 1805). The quote may also be found in "The New Book of Unusual Quotations" by Rudolf Flesch (Harper & Row, 1966)