Teaching
Statistics, eh?
Constructed and maintained by Augustin
Vukov. Please email me with any feedback you may have.
General lecture tips
Notes on Lecturing The Lecture Method 10 teaching tips The Large Lecture Course Delivering a Lecture
Activated lectures
Techniques of Active Learning Beating the Numbers Game Quickies during lecture Throwing a change-up at lecture An active learning case studySpecial topics
Encouraging civil behaviour in large classes
Broad resources
McGill Online Teaching and Learning Resources are nicely organized, alphabetically by topic
Historical tales & tidbits worth telling in
class
Gossett at Guinness – brewing beer
and t-tests. I like to tell this
tale as in text by DeVeaux et al, below, accompanied by my own somewhat
speedier computer simulated samples, with tally of results showing a
long tailed distribution.
Sir Ronald Fisher biographical notes
Or check biographies at Statisticians in history and MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Statistical Humour
Galley
of Statistics Jokes Profession
Jokes Science
Jokes The
Canonical List of Math Jokes
Personally, how these people can make fun of the such powerful techniques like the analysis of variance method used in one-way anova, two-way anova, multi-way anova, and latin boss-anova completely eludes me!
Spice up your lectures
with some Video Case
Studies
Against All Odds: Inside Statistics - The popular Annenberg video series, containing actual case studies in documentary format, interspersed with traditional statistics lectures. You can spice up lectures by inserting some of these case studies. Check out my recommendations
Computer software
(F = free; B = abbreviated version available at reduced price bundled with various texts)
Minitab statistical software – my choice – powerful and easy to learn. Version 14, just out, has some nice improvements. B
SPSS
has many purchase/lease/size options available.
B
JMP statistical software is an SAS product, for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux. An intro user’s guide is at the Chance website. B
The R Project for Statistical Computing - R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics (similar to S). Not menu-driven. F
StatCrunch (formerly known as WebStat) – web-based software, bearing some resemblance to Minitab, that does quite a lot (alas, only one-way ANOVA and no multiple comparisons) F
Textbooks – recommendations/reviews
Introduction to the Practice of Statistics by Moore & McCabe – The book that set the contemporary standard for teaching introductory statistics, with its strong emphasis on practical data-oriented thinking and concepts. Pushes the limits at times, e.g. adding a new supplementary chapter (on CD) on bootstrapping in 5th ed. Strong exercise sections with varied, thoughtful questions. The Electronic Encyclopedia of Statistical Examples & Exercises and other useful resources (quizzes, applets, supplemental solved exercises) may be found at the publisher’s web site or on the text CD-ROM. On the negative side, some say it is too verbose, and directed toward a few elite schools. Multi-factor ANOVA and multiple regression are only lightly touched on. An abbreviated version of the text is also available.
Stats – Data and Models by Deveaux, Velleman, Bock – This book has much of the practical, data-oriented flair of the Moore/McCabe book, but with some additional pedagogical features and humour. Several different versions of the text are available.
Multi-media interactive courseware
Active Stats is a multimedia approach (video, simulation, animation, stats package) to learning Statistics, which includes the content found in a typical introductory statistics course. Also available in Excel, JMP, Minitab and SPSS versions.
CyberStats is a complete online stats course, including text, interactive applets, testing facilities, computing software, course management system, created by some talented people (Jessica Utts et al). Suitable for on-campus, distance-learning or self-paced.
Classics & Interesting books:
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte – the classic on principles of graphic design, with great examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly
Statistics – A Guide to the Unknown edited by Judith Tanur et al – collection of essays describing important applications of statistics and probability in many fields
The Cartoon Guide to Statistics by Gonick & Smith – presents the basic concepts, very accurately, but in a unique and pleasant format
Sample multiple-choice questions
SticiGui sample test questions
STA220
Final Exam 2001 has 30 questions from the 2001 final exam in an
introductory Statistics service course at
Educational applets
Descriptives:
Interactive
histogram - See the histogram change as you vary the class width (
Histogram explorer - See statistics change as you vary the shape of the histogram
Regression:
Regression by eye - Guess the correlation and regression line, then compare with true.
Putting Points - Click to add points, see the regression line, correlation, and residual plots change
Least-squares - Vary the line or the points, to change the sum of squared residuals, visualized as squared boxes
Sampling distributions:
Sampling distributions – choose or draw a population, choose a statistic, choose a sample size, see samples one at a time, or 1000’s at a time – Wow!
The quincunx – a visual expression of the Central Limit Theorem
Probability simulations:
Let’s Make a Deal - switch doors or stay put?
The Birthday Problem – how often will we find matching birthdays in a group? Or here.
The Cliff-Hanger – random walks can be dangerous
Collecting animal cards – how many WebFlake boxes to collect all the prizes?
Rolling dice - choose the number of dice, then roll ‘em
Inference:
Confidence Interval Applet - Simulate and count how many Confidence Intervals cover the mean
ANOVA applet has one-way and two-way interactive ANOVA visualizations
A variety of applets/applet links may be found at
The Rice Virtual Lab – lots of good applets here, good discussions too
Java
Applets at ISDS at
Statistical demonstration applets - links to various sites with applets, well organized and categorized by topic
Data Sets on the web, that may be useful for examples, test questions, etc
The Data and Story Library (DASL) is an online library of data files and
stories that illustrate the use of basic statistics methods. Includes a search engine.
StatLib-Datasets Archive – over 100 data sets from various sources (data and descriptions)
CHANCE Data Sets - small collection of data sets, from recent events
JSE Data Archive has data sets with accompanying articles discussing possible uses
Data Sets from the Exploring Data website, with analysis suggestions
Statistical Data Sets from UmassAmherst, organized nicely by statistical topic
Other sources of data (government, official agencies. …)
Statistics Canada – check out their Canadian Statistics and Products and Services
The Data Web is a collaboration between the U.S. Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control including a special browser for searching and accessing datasets from a variety of surveys
WHO Statistical Information System
U.S. Dept of Agriculture Economics and Statistics System has several hundred searchable reports and datasets
FedStats is
a gateway
to statistics from over 100
Bureau
of
Justice Statistics and FBI
pages have
U.S. Energy Information Administration has comprehensive and historical data on energy production, consumption, prices, and trade (select Featured Publications or Historical Data)
National Center for Education Statistics provides a compilation of statistical information re American education
The Baseball Archive has tons of baseball statistics, including salary data
Statistics in the News
CHANCE News abstracts current events in the news that use concepts from probability or statistics, with discussion questions, links to the article and other related resources.
Also try the newspapers, like
U of T Bulletin research news e.g. Trials under fire and Multiple therapies
Toronto’s Globe and Mail Science & Health
New York Times Science & Health links
Journals
CHANCE Magazine – jointly published by the American Statistical Association and Springer-Verlag, showcases the use of statistical methods and ideas in the social, biological, physical and medical sciences, and is accessible to a broad audience. Useful for case studies, student reports/projects, etc. Some articles are available online.
Journal of Statistics Education, an online journal, has some interesting papers with ideas and approaches that may be of interest to post-secondary educators
Newsgroups/Blogs
Andrew Gelman’s Statistics Blog
Online texts
The Little Handbook of Statistical Practice
SticiGui - Statistics text and tools for internet and classroom instruction with a graphical user interface (including sample tests)
Engineering Statistics Textbook - engineering oriented, but good stats coverage
Web sites with general resources
The Chance web site contains all sorts of useful resources
Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics
Exploring Data - secondary school oriented, but with some varied and useful resources, including good data sets
Classroom
demonstrations/activities/investigations
Birthday matches: are there any matches in your class?
Drawing random samples and examining sampling distributions – using your students
P-values illustrated for Wilcoxon test using playing cards
Coin spinning: Is the probability of head equal to 0.5?
Sampling distributions and estimation error using jelly beans/marbles/beads/etc
Quincunx - bring one
to
class, let
students drop the beads, examine results
Miscellaneous links
Gallery
of
Data Visualization - The Best and the Worst of Statistical Graphics (including material from Tufte’s book,
mentioned above)
Simpson's Paradox
explored
Jeff's Applets - Games
and Markov Chains
International
Conference on Teaching Statistics - ICOTS 7, July 2006, Brazil