Data Presentation

A sketch by Anastasia Mandel reinterpreting "Red Square: Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions" by Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (1915) with the statistical caption "R^2, or it might be a Russian square, used when there is a shortage of the Latin ones." This is part of a collection of sketches by Anastasia Mandel and their accompanying statistical captions written by Stan Lipovetsky and Igor Mandel that took first place in the cartoon & art category of the 2009 A-Mu-sing contest sponsored by CAUSE. The collection and their accompanying statistical captions discussed in the paper "How art helps to understand statistics" (Model Assisted Statistics and Applications, 2009) by Stan Lipovetsky and Igor Mandel in volume 4 pages 313-324. Free to use in classrooms and on course websites.

August 25, 2009 Activity webinar presented by Michelle Everson, University of Minnesota and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. In a classroom setting, students can engage in hands-on activities in order to better understand certain concepts and ideas. Replicating hands-on activities in an online environment, however, can be a challenge for instructors. The purpose of this webinar is to present an applet that was created to replicate a "Post-it Note" activity commonly used in classroom sections of an undergraduate introductory statistics course at University of Minnesota. The Post-it Note activity is meant to help students develop a more conceptual understanding of the mean and the median by moving a set of Post-it Notes along a number line. During the webinar, participants have an opportunity to see and experience just how online students are able to interact with an applet named the "Sticky Centers" applet, and the webinar presents the kinds of materials and assignments that have been created to use in conjunction with this applet. The webinar ends with a preview of a newer applet that is being developed in order to replicate the famous "Gummy Bears in Space" activity (presented in Schaeffer, Gnanadesikan, Watkins & Witmer, 1996). A supplemental student handout is available for download free of charge.

September 22, 2009 Activity Webinar presented by Diane Evans, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. This webinar is based on an activity found at www.lhs.logan.k12.ut.us/~jsmart/tank.htm and other on-line resources (see references). During World War II, the British and U.S. statisticians used estimation methods to deduce the productivity of Germany's armament factories using serial numbers found on captured equipment, such as tanks. The tanks were numbered in a manner similar to 1, 2, 3, ..., N, and the goal of the allies was to estimate the population maximum N from their collected sample of serial numbers. The purpose of this activity is to introduce students to the concept of an unbiased estimator of a population parameter. Students develop several estimators for the parameter N and compare them by running simulations in Minitab. Extra materials available for download free of charge.