Instructions
Complete the activities below!
Complete the activities below!
by Sabrina Little
The slick pen glides across paper
precisely scraping the ruler’s edge
marking a line beside many lonesome dots
a line of best fit as snug as a sweater.
The slope is a mere fraction, but the line it fabricated would stretch on,
encompassing an infinite amount of graph paper.
As the line traveled, it would pass by many data points
and the wispy voices of the outliers would be heard on the wind
calling to the line from worlds away, asking it to contort
to come and gather the lonely dots, and hold them shaking in its tepid arms
but the line never does.
Instead, it continues on without a sideways glance
forever the same slope
forever the same straight line.
by Lawrence Mark Lesser
When any x you try
Yields the same y,
That’s still a function.
The dysfunction
Is the constant
Perseveration:
Daily seeking
New outcomes
(In work or love)
From plugging more values
Into that parent function
Now that you know,
Or trying to fit
A line
Falling flat.
I tried to fit a line to estimate how many people fall per banana peel, but it was a slippery slope.
Larry Lesser and Dennis Pearl
Lyrics & Music © 2014 Greg Crowther
If every gal I’ve met is a hypothesis
Who might turn out to be the mate I’ve sought,
And if I were to yield
To the conventions of my field,
Then you would be referred to as H-naught...
CHORUS:
You’re my null, after all; you’re a theory in the making,
So robust to every test -- my hypothesis of choice.
You account for the past; you’re a vision of the future;
And when I feel confused, you’re my signal through the noise.
My life has been an uncontrolled experiment --
A source of all too many scattered plots.
But you provide a line
With an R-squared of point-nine;
Yes, you and you alone connect my dots...
CHORUS
One can never prove a null
In a finite length of time;
Each finding simply strengthens it or not.
But if I see trends emerge --
And let’s just say I do --
I’d be crazy not to publish what I’ve got...
CHORUS [twice]
Lyric © 2015 Lawrence M. Lesser; Music by Dominic Dousa
Before you do regression,
Check out the scatterplot
Make sure a linear relationship
Is good for what you've got!
We try to predict weight
Using height as the predictor
If the correlation is really strong,
We will be a victor!
For a unit increase of height
The expected weight will go
Up by five units:
That's the meaning of the slope!
If r equals 0.9
then 0.81 is r square:
The part of variation
In Y that X does share!
X and Y
Have a relationship
And our well-fit line
Gives us a good model to predict!
Lyric © 2015 by Lawrence Mark Lesser
may sing to tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"
How do shoe length values go
When height is high or when it's low?
Like horses on a merry-go-round
When they're both up or they're both down,
This provides an illustration of a positive correlation!
How do used car prices go
When mileage is high or low?
Like horses on a merry-go-round
Where one is up when the other's down,
This provides an illustration of a negative correlation!
How do weights of people go
When IQ score is high or low?
Wild horses on a merry-go-round:
No pattern to the up or down.
This is an illustration of zero correlation!