Sampling & Survey Issues

A song to aid in discussing various common problems seen in the wording of questions in sample surveys. The original music and lyrics were written in 2017 by Lawrence Mark Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. The song won second place in the 2017 A-mu-sing contest.

A cartoon to aid in the discussion of the importance of replication. The cartoon was created in 2017 by Lyla El-Fayomi, a student at the University of Toronto at Mississauga and won an honorable mention in the cartoon category of the 2017 A-mu-sing competition.

A poem to illustrate the dependence between trials when sampling is without replacement. To set this poem up in the classroom, you might ask the students questions like: "If I want to put the Supreme Court Justices in a random order, I can pick one at a time without replacement. Before I pick the first Justice, do I know who it's going to be? Before I pick the last Justice, do I know who it's going to be?" The poem was written in 2017 by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso.

A cartoon to be used for discussing the history and use of statistics in polling. The cartoon was used in the October 2016 CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest. The winning caption was submitted by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso, while the drawing was created by John Landers using an idea from Dennis Pearl. A second winning caption "If your sample isn't drawn correctly, it will be flawed even if it came straight from the horse's mouth!" was by Alan Russell from Elon University is well-suited for starting a conversation about of the importance of design in surveys.(see "Cartoon: The XYLOPH Survey II") Honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging in the October caption contest included "XYLOPH Poll Results: A majority of the creatures on the green and blue planet are brown neigh-sayers" written by Anna Peterson from Iowa State University; "So your answer to the question, 'Do aliens exist?' would be Neigh?" written by Erin Hodgess of University of Houston; "Sorry 'neigh'bor ... I only participate in Gallop's surveys" written by Jeff Collier from LCM High School; and "Based on the findings of this survey all creatures on this planet must have 4 legs, a tail, and neigh in answer to any question..., how convenient that I met one of them on my first try!," written by Catharina Beussen, from Alisal High School.