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

[ian fellows]

I'm in no way affiliated with the author, but this blog post struck  
me as interesting and accessible:

http://perfdynamics.blogspot.com/2010/06/linear-modeling-in-r-and- 
hubble-bubble.html


On Jun 23, 2010, at 1:13 PM, Joris Meys wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> R-sig-teaching at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Geoffrey Smith
>> Visiting Assistant Professor
>> Department of Finance
>> W. P. Carey School of Business
>> Arizona State University
>>
>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> R-sig-teaching at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching
>>
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> 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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