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

[Greg Snow]

I use a card trick to teach hypothesis testing, I have 3 students each come and do a "random" draw from my deck of CArdboard Randomization Devices (CARDs) and they tend to be a little surprised when each draws the 6 of clubs (the deck is from a magic shop, I am not that good a magician).  I then ask if anyone believes that they just witnessed 3 completely random draws from a regular deck, generally nobody does (at least not the ones that were awake), then I ask why or why not, it usually takes a minute for someone to put their thoughts into words (but it is worth the awkward silence to force them to say it).  The response is usually something like "that wouldn't happen by chance", then I talk about the idea of chance vs. something else explaining what they see, build it into the whole hypothesis testing vocab etc.

For confidence intervals I often have students count the colors of M&M's candies and get proportions. The M&M website a while ago had the official proportions of the colors, so I tell them what the true proportion is for one of the colors and show how their counted percentages are close but not exactly the same, then show a computer simulation based on that truth and show how close/far the estimates are on average, then we choose a different color, look at one of the observed percentages and ask what the truth could be (with the 1st color most of the simulated values were within 15% of the truth, so we should expect the truth for this color to be within 15% of the observed), then once we have the basics for the confidence interval I tell them the true value and see if the interval contains that value (and show other simulated CIs).

Look at the TeachingDemos package for simulations and interactive graphics to show various concepts (and let me know if you have additional ideas).

The chance news wiki (http://www.causeweb.org/wiki/chance/index.php/Main_Page) has many examples in the real world of statistics being used (correctly and incorrectly) or places where it should have been used.  Great place to find interesting examples.

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111


> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-sig-teaching-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-sig-teaching-
> bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Christophe Genolini
> Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 12:09 PM
> To: r-sig-teaching at r-project.org
> Subject: [R-sig-teaching] Statistics are SO boring...
> 
> 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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