This paper introduces a dataset and associated analysis of the scores of National Football League (NFL) games over the 2012, 2013, and first five weeks of the 2014 season. In the face of current media attention to "lopsided" scores in Thursday night games in the early part of the 2014 season, t-test results indicate no statistically…

This paper examines the use of a randomization-based activity to introduce the ANOVA F-test to students. The two main goals of this activity are to successfully teach students to comprehend ANOVA F-tests and to increase student comprehension of sampling distributions. Four sections of students in an advanced introductory statistics course…

Histograms are adept at revealing the distribution of data values, especially the shape of the distribution and any outlier values. They are included in introductory statistics texts, research methods texts, and in the popular press, yet students often have difficulty interpreting the information conveyed by a histogram. This research identifies…

Bayesian methodology continues to be widely used in statistical applications. As a result, it is increasingly important to introduce students to Bayesian thinking at early stages in their mathematics and statistics education. While many students in upper level probability courses can recite the differences in the Frequentist and Bayesian…

Engaging students in active learning can enhance their understanding and appreciation of a subject such as statistics. Classroom activities and projects help to engage students and further promote the learning process. In this paper, an activity investigating the influence of population size and wealth on the medal counts from the 2012 London…

As a part of an opening course survey, data on eye color and gender were collected from students enrolled in an introductory statistics course at a large university over a recent four year period. Biologically, eye color and gender are independent traits. However, in the data collected from our students, there is a statistically significant…

In Bayesian statistics, the choice of the prior distribution is often controversial. Different rules for selecting priors have been suggested in the literature, which, sometimes, produce priors that are difficult for the students to understand intuitively. In this article, we use a simple heuristic to illustrate to the students the rather…

In this paper, we consider some combinatorial and statistical aspects of the popular "Powerball" lottery game. It is not difficult for students in an introductory statistics course to compute the probabilities of winning various prizes, including the "jackpot" in the Powerball game. Assuming a unique jackpot winner, it is not difficult to find the…