[R-sig-teaching] Statistics are SO boring...

[Joris Meys]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 8:59 PM, Geoffrey Smith <gps at asu.edu> wrote:
> You might think about looking at stock returns and asking questions about
> the probability of doubling your money or of getting a rate of return that
> exceeds the historical mean.  Geoff

Doesn't always work though. Bio-engineers for example are typically
less interested in gambling on the stockmarket... ;-)

Now serious, one of the finest examples I met is the example about the
death penalty in Florida, to be found in Agresti's book "Categorical
Data Analysis" on page 48 and further. It gives a very nice
illustration of Simpson's paradox, applied to real data about a topic
that leaves few untouched. Basically Agresti shows there how one came
to the conclusion that whites got more often the death penalty than
blacks in Florida. If one didn't take the victim into account, that
is. When looking at the victims, it was clear that the death penalty
was more often declared when the victim was white. It turned out that
blacks mostly kill blacks, and whites mostly killed whites.
Conditional on the victim, the story turned around and blacks clearly
got the death penalty more often. The data goes from 1971 to 1987, so
is fairly safe to use for educational purposes

Cheers
Joris

>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Christophe Genolini <cgenolin at u-paris10.fr
>> wrote:
>
>> Hi the list,
>>
>> As a statistics teacher, I teach to NOT-scientists student, public that it
>> is permanently necessary to motivate. I am thus in search of examples both
>> scientific and playful to illustrate my courses. It is not always easy to
>> find. As other teacher might be in the same case, I say to myself that we
>> could maybe share our 'best' examples?
>>
>> So I start: a social psychologist (Nicolas Gueguen, article here
>> http://nicolas.gueguen.free.fr/index.html) has establishes that if we
>> approach a perfect unknown lady on a beach and we ask for its phone number,
>> we have 9 % of chance to obtain it. If we call her by touching her slightly
>> on the front arm, we have 19 % (!!!) of chances to obtain it (test of chi2,
>> p < 0.01). Surprising, isn't it?
>>
>> So what are your 'best examples' ?
>>
>> Christophe Genolini
>>
>> --
>> -----------------------------------------
>> Christophe Genolini
>> Maitre de conférences
>> INSERM U669, Equipe Biostatistiques
>> UFR STAPS, Université de Paris Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense
>> Web: http:\\christophe.genolini.free.fr
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Geoffrey Smith
> Visiting Assistant Professor
> Department of Finance
> W. P. Carey School of Business
> Arizona State University
>
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>
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>



-- 
Joris Meys
Statistical consultant

Ghent University
Faculty of Bioscience Engineering
Department of Applied mathematics, biometrics and process control

tel : +32 9 264 59 87
Joris.Meys at Ugent.be
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