Questions tagged [teaching]

For questions about the teaching of probability and statistics, at any level.

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Describing guaranteed profit situations which are stronger than just 'superfair wager'

Context. I am tutoring a final year secondary school student in mathematics. To illustrate the principles of card-counting in a situation of sampling without replacement, I've decided to show her a ...
microhaus's user avatar
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7 votes
4 answers
813 views

Why are statistics textbook questions so frequently totally artificial?

Anyone who reads the questions here on a regular basis quickly recognizes some questions as being from textbooks or exams. Such questions need the self-study tag and one reason for closing a question ...
5 votes
1 answer
94 views

"Famous" set of correlation plots used for teaching

I am familiar with Anscombe's quartet I am now looking for a different set of plots. From what I remember, these all had correlations of zero, and there was a question here on CV, and I think it was ...
camhsdoc's user avatar
  • 369
5 votes
1 answer
133 views

Can I convert a frequentist p-value into a Bayesian Posterior Probability

I am drafting a teaching session for fellow clinicians to try and provide a somewhat intuitive understanding on how Bayesian statistics differs from the frequentist methods we are taught at medical ...
Harvs's user avatar
  • 191
3 votes
0 answers
67 views

Different conclusion from confidence interval and NHST

I would like to ask. I gave to students an example where they test : $H_0: \pi=0.65$ $Ha: \pi>0.65$ $\hat{p}= 0.76$ $n=50$ Students have to calculate NHST and also confidence interval for ...
user210804's user avatar
16 votes
5 answers
3k views

Besides the Literary Digest poll of 1936, what are some famous examples of biased samples that led to erroneous conclusions?

The Literary Digest poll of 1936 is often mentioned to show the dangers of using convenience sampling. Are there other famous examples where a wrong sampling method led to erroneous conclusions? I ask ...
31 votes
13 answers
7k views

How to explain 1.5 children?

I teach undergrad stats and every year one student asks "You can't have 1.5 children" (the mean for the dataset). I am flummoxed every time to create a sensical answer. I've tried: "no ...
RLDavis's user avatar
  • 313
6 votes
2 answers
317 views

Why do we adjust for within-group variability in statistical testing of differences in group means?

I hope this question fits the forum. I'm not a statistician, but have received decent training in statistics and use statistical modeling in my daily work. I've been tasked to give a very condensed &...
Sointu's user avatar
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2 votes
0 answers
39 views

What are some Wikipedia articles on statistics that contain erroneous statements? [closed]

I've noticed that sometimes, statements made in Wikipedia articles about statistics are criticized on CrossValidated. I understand that one does not necessarily have the time to edit an article to fix ...
Coris's user avatar
  • 21
1 vote
0 answers
48 views

Most efficient way of converting a Quarto document to a presentation [closed]

I currently have a large body of statistics lecture notes that I wrote in Rmarkdown/Quarto document format, and I am looking to convert these notes to Quarto presentations in the simplest way possible....
Rmarkdown_user's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
74 views

Which random variables $X,Y$ are related by $Y=X^2$ operation? [closed]

For which $X$ coming from some named distribution family, does distribution of $X^2$ also have a name? Here are some examples I found, any others? ...
Yaroslav Bulatov's user avatar
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0 answers
82 views

Why is linear regression taught differently from what I have learned? [duplicate]

I took a machine learning course using the book "Learning from Data: A Short Course" by Hsuan-Tien Lin, Malik Magdon-Ismail, and Yaser Abu-Mostafa (LFD) You are given a set of examples $\{...
Curaçao Hajek's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
47 views

Using the normal distribution in real life

I am looking for examples of where the normal distribution has been used in published journals or other real data sets. To add some context, I teach A-level (16-18) Maths and I would like to include ...
10 votes
2 answers
706 views

Does the Frequentist approach to forecasting ignore uncertainty in the parameter's value?

I am reviewing textbooks for our new undergraduate course in Bayesian Statistical Methods. In chapter 7 of Ben Lambert's book, A Student's Guide to Bayesian Statistics, he states Because of the two ...
Gregg H's user avatar
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7 votes
1 answer
156 views

Who created the "soup analogy" for sampling

The soup analogy is, You only need a single spoon to sample the soup, provided it is well stirred. It has been used several times here Sampling distributions of sample means and What is your ...
James K's user avatar
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0 votes
0 answers
68 views

Simulating dataset for class

Not sure whether what I’m after is possible, but thought I would ask. I am trying to create a database with a dichotomized dependent variables and a bunch of binary (1/0) independent variables. I'd ...
dean's user avatar
  • 425
10 votes
3 answers
503 views

How to motivate undergrads to take an Intro to Math Stats course

How would you motivate an undergraduate student to take an Introduction to Mathematical Statistics course, if they know that much of their time will be spent proving results they've already seen in ...
3 votes
2 answers
114 views

Good teaching activities for variability and standardized distributions for undergrad stats

As the question states, I am looking for some warmup activities for teaching undergrads practical examples of variation and standardized distributions. I think the first part is relatively easy to ...
1 vote
1 answer
94 views

Why is bayes theorem formula always presented in the hard-to-remember way? [closed]

$P(B|A)\cdot P(A) = P(A|B)\cdot P(B)$ would be so much more intuitive to understand and thus easier to remember.
abcd efg's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
71 views

Why do we use the terminology of Type I/Type II when describing errors in hypothesis testing?

I was teaching someone else about type I and type II errors, and they asked the question of why errors are called type I and type II errors. It seems to me that we could call type I errors a "...
clementzach's user avatar
10 votes
4 answers
924 views

Introductory material on splines

I am looking for a basic, step-by-step introduction into modelling with splines. (I have encountered splines while teaching another topic. The textbook I am using does not cover splines in sufficient ...
Richard Hardy's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
82 views

Update to Box and Jenkins Air Passenger data? [closed]

A textbook example of a time series is the Box and Jenkins Air Passenger data. In R you can get it with the command data(AirPassengers). It has the number of ...
David White's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
438 views

Solutions to 'Statistical Learning with Sparsity'

I've recently been working through Statistical Learning with Sparsity (SLS) by Hastie, Tibshirani and Hastie. I found some exercises very hard, and think I found some mistakes. A set of solutions ...
3 votes
1 answer
93 views

How to read the formal multiplication rule?

I have no problem understanding the question at Statistics Show How To Question 3: A wedding caterer gives you three choices for the main course, six starter choices and five options for dessert. How ...
Kirsten's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
100 views

Bias of an estimator depends on whether you take expectation of the estimator or its inverse

(Please read until the end) Consider two ways of writing the exponential distribution: (A) $\frac{1}{\beta} e^{-\frac{x}{\beta}}$ and (B) $\theta e^{-x\theta}$ If I estimate $\beta$ or $\theta$ ...
learner's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
313 views

Is the non-multicollinearity assumption for OLS multiple regression just an assumption of convenience?

The four assumptions for bivariate regression are:     • (L)inearity     • (I)ndepdent observations     • (N)ormal errors     • (E)qual variance And for multiple regression we add a fifth assumption:  ...
Gregg H's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
55 views

When do we REALLY need to distinguish interval from ratio measurement levels?

This question is specifically aimed toward the practice of statistics and data science and toward statistics educators (particularly introductory level statistics). In brief, ¿when do we really need ...
Gregg H's user avatar
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7 votes
5 answers
3k views

How to learn statistics for medical research?

I'm a last year medical student, as we say "Intern doctor". In the future I want to do research on the issue that I want to get in. Therefore I want to learn mathematics, statistics, R ...
1 vote
0 answers
19 views

Normally distributed: examples like LTCM

I am looking for examples of organizations suffering dire consequences (losing money) because they have assumed that something was normally distributed hence underestimating the risk of tail events. ...
IcannotFixThis's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
201 views

Non-self-referential interpretation of confidence intervals?

Interpreting what a (say) 95% confidence interval actually means is obviously tricky, especially when you are trying to teach it to students just beginning to learn stats. One of the biggest ...
Graham Wright's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
110 views

Resources or textbooks about teaching statistics (pedagogy)

I want to become a better teacher and, therefore, I am looking for resources or textbooks about how to teach statistics and quantitative methods to students or learners (focusing on hints on how to ...
Arne Jonas Warnke's user avatar
26 votes
7 answers
3k views

Explain in layperson's terms why predictive models aren't causally interpretable

Imagine that you are asked to infer some causal effect -- a change in an outcome $y$ in response to some variable $x$. But, the person asking for this directs you to use a predictive model to do so. ...
generic_user's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
400 views

Central Limit Theorem - intuitive explanation without deep math [duplicate]

The Central Limit Theorem says that the distribution of the sample mean is approximately normal. Is there any intuitive explanation for why this should be so? I know it can be proven with deep math, ...
D.W.'s user avatar
  • 6,668
1 vote
2 answers
131 views

In Bayes Theorem why do we say :given that" when "out of" is more understandable. (Why is Conditional on referred to as "Given") [closed]

I understood the answer to my problem here when I substituted the "given that" symbol with the phrase "out of" I got this idea from 3Blue1Brown where Grant points out that people ...
Kirsten's user avatar
  • 763
3 votes
4 answers
153 views

What are some references to teach statistics to business students?

I am going to teach a Statistics course next year and I should cover the basics of probabilities and statistics to undergrad students in business. They don't have any background in probability, so, at ...
5 votes
2 answers
593 views

Why is the formula for the density of a transformed random variable expressed in terms of the derivative of the inverse?

In this very nice answer, the intuitive explanation of the formula for the density of a transformed random variable, $Y = g(X)$, leads naturally to an expression like $$f_Y(y) = \frac{f_X(g^{-1}(y))}{...
R Hahn's user avatar
  • 201
21 votes
1 answer
862 views

Why do we use term “population” instead of “Data-generating process”?

I have always been confused about the use of the term “population” in statistics. In my first statistics course I was taught that we need a sample, because surveying the whole population is too costly....
Moysey Abramowitz's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
342 views

What concept comes before VAE and after GMM?

Suppose I am designing a course on generative models and I have just finished discussing GMM. My goal is to teach VAE. However, VAE's technicality is very high. Does there exist some model in between ...
Olórin's user avatar
  • 724
4 votes
0 answers
239 views

LCA - how to include predictors (conceptual difference between one-step and bias-corrected three-step approach?)

I am trying to teach LCA as part of a modelling course, but I haven't quite made sense of how to deal with testing whether certain (demographic variables) predict class membership. Question: (Why) ...
Lukas Wallrich's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
17 views

Why does the Standard deviation formula when using coded data not account for the addition or subtraction of coded part

When we code data from x to x-b the standard deviation formula is: Sd(x)=sd(x-b)= (sum of(x-b)^2)/n - (sum of (x-b)/n)^2 Why do they not use (sum of (x-b)/n +b )^2 for the second part since this is ...
Karin's user avatar
  • 11
3 votes
0 answers
65 views

Textbook default estimator of Bernoulli variance

Why do "most" (basically all) statistics text books use $\hat{\sigma}^2=\hat{p} (1-\hat{p})$ as an estimator for the variance of a Bernoulli process which we know is biased. Should the first ...
Markus Loecher's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
57 views

Is this problem calculable only due to the parameter choices?

I am looking at a problem form Hogg, Tannis & Zimmerman (Ed. 10), and I am curious if the given problem is calculable (for an upper-level undergrad math/stats course) because of the choice of the ...
Gregg H's user avatar
  • 5,454
7 votes
4 answers
3k views

Trick to remember when to reject null (p-values vs alpha)

I teach introductory statistics to undergraduates and they are often confused with hypothesis testing. In particular, while the rule is we reject the null hypothesis at significance level $\alpha$ ...
luchonacho's user avatar
  • 2,717
3 votes
0 answers
241 views

Why don't textbooks on statistics start with an introduction to probability?

I recently read through Introduction to Probability, Statistics, and Random Processes by Hossein Pishro-Nik (free online version available here), and what I liked most about it is that it starts off ...
mhdadk's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
61 views

Is there any university program that offers an intro statistical methods class that is bayesian -instead- of a frequentist one? [closed]

Is there any university program that offers an introductory statistical methods class that is bayesian -instead- of a frequentist one? Surely every intro to stats class in every program in the world, ...
Mitch's user avatar
  • 1,913
2 votes
2 answers
102 views

Does anyone in practice actually develop supervised model from scratch outside of classroom setting?

I have a question in regards to why bother with developing a model from scratch and perform hyperparameter tuning when you can just use transfer learning for supervised learning. The way that a ...
Curaçao Hajek's user avatar
74 votes
32 answers
6k views

What are the worst (commonly adopted) ideas/principles in statistics?

In my statistical teaching, I encounter some stubborn ideas/principles relating to statistics that have become popularised, yet seem to me to be misleading, or in some cases utterly without merit. I ...
4 votes
5 answers
86 views

Pedagogical order of study for named distributions

I've seen myriads of named probability densities or distributions in multiple books and courses, usually both Binomial and Bernoulli are among the first discrete ones, while for continuous they use ...
4 votes
0 answers
96 views

Reference for flawed randomized controlled trial

For a seminar, I am preparing an overview of advantages and shortcomings of randomized control trials (RCT; one shortcoming is, for example, often a limited external validity). To illustrate ...
1 vote
1 answer
234 views

Web apps for visualization of probability distributions

I am looking for a tool to demonstrate how the shapes of some basic probability distributions (binomial, hypergeometric, Poisson, exponential and normal) change as a function of their parameters. I ...

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