Teaching Resources

Compiled by Robert F. Heckard, Penn State University and Jessica Utts, University of California, Davis

Disclaimer: All links here worked when we wrote this document, but the web is a fast-changing place so we don’t guarantee they’ll always work.

http://poll.gallup.com The Gallup Organization’s site. Frequent updating with current polls and good archive of polls conducted in last few years.
http://health.yahoo.com/news/ Reuters Daily Health News provided by Yahoo!. Good daily summaries of health related news. Rich source of current examples.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/datadir.htm A set of links to all of the major polls (USA Today, CNN, NY Times, ABC, Gallup Poll , ...). Maintained by The Washington Post
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/healthindex.htm USA Today Health Index. An archive of past health stories reported in the USA Today newspaper.
http://www.publicagenda.org Recent survey results for “hot” public issues (abortion, crime, etc.).
http://www.pollingreport.com A collection of recent poll results on business, politics and society from many different sources.
http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/ Health news from CNN (Cable News Network)

http://www.causeweb.org/ Web site of CAUSE, the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education. Many ideas and resources, including peer reviewed activities.
http://noppa5.pc.helsinki.fi/links.html Huge collection of links related to statistics education created by Juha Puranen, Department of Statistics, University of Helsinki
http://exploringdata.cqu.edu.au/ Suggestions for data exploration activities, maintained by Rex Boggs, Glenmore State High School, Rockhampton, Australia
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/chance_news/news.html Chance News: A newsletter of recent (mostly United States) media items useful for class discussion.
http://www.amstat.org/education/gaise Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE): two reports with recommendations for introductory statistics courses at the college level and statistics education in PreK-12 years. Written by top statistics educators, sponsored by the American Statistical Association. Lots of advice for teaching introductory statistics.

http://www.publicagenda.org Nice discussions of issues connected to surveys on “hot” public issues (abortion, crime, etc.). In particular, click on “Red Flags” for each issue to see examples of how question wording, survey timing, and so on affect survey results.
http://www.ncpp.org/?q=node/4 , “20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About A Poll.” Informative article from the National Council on Public Polls.

Data Sets

Note: There are 54 data sets on the CD-ROM bundled with our textbook, Mind On Statistics by Utts and Heckard.

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/DASL/ Carnegie Mellon Data and Story Library (DASL).Data sets are cross indexed by statistical application and research discipline.
http://csa.berkeley.edu:7502/archive.htm General Social Survey archive and on-line data analysis program at the University of California at Berkeley. A similar archiveis at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/ (University of Michigan )

http://www.fedstats.gov/ FedStats Home Page.“The gateway to statistics from over 100 U.S. Federal agencies.”
http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html University of Michigan Statistical Resources Center. Huge set of links to government data sources.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/express.htm National Center for Health Statistics- Surveys and Data Collection Systems
http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Science/Social_Research/Data_Collections/ Yahoo!’s directory of social science data collections.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/Statistics/ Yahoo!’s directory of statistical data collections

Miscellaneous Case Studies and Data Resources

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Sharks/ISAF/ISAF.htm Shark Attacks-International Shark Attack File, shark attack statistics including special sections for the great white shark and shark attacks on divers. (Thanks to Tom Hettmansperger of Penn State for pointing out this site.)
http://www.DrugAbuseStatistics.samhsa.gov/ Drug Abuse Statistics from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Statistics
http://www.drugabusestatistics.samhsa.gov/nhsda.htm/ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Office of Applied Studies

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/%7Elane/rvls.html The Rice University Virtual Lab in Statistics (David Lane) Includes simulations, activities, case studies, and many interesting links.
http://Statpages.org Interactive Statistical Calculation Pages. Links to many different Java demonstrations and calculators
http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~susan/surprise/ Probability applets. One illustrates the birthday problem in a fun way.

http://mathforum.org/kb/forum.jspa?forumID=67 Searchable archive of thousands of email messages contributed by high school and college statistics teachers, about topics as diverse as studies in the news or where to find test questions.

http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/ Free online journal sponsored by the American Statistical Association Includes articles about teaching statistics, interesting datasets, current articles in the news for discussion.