Keeping students interested in biostatistics can be challenging, especially for those in service courses (e.g. medical residents, nurses, dentists, biology students, etc.) where most are enrolled in the class as a requirement.  We will discuss methods that help accomplish this goal. Topics include the use of in-class demonstrations, presentation of fallacies in numerical reasoning with examples from the medical literature, the use of rewards and statistical humor.  Simpson’s paradox, with examples from medicine and epidemiology, and the Will Rogers phenomenon, a paradox concerning cancer staging will be presented. We will demonstrate capture-recapture estimation and discuss how it can be applied to biology, epidemiology and public health. We will give an example of a “wonderfully bad” paper from the dental literature and reference seven similar papers from the medical literature.

Hope you can enjoy these presentations and use them in your teaching.

Jim Norton, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Biostatistics, Carolinas HealthCare System

My Favorites:

• Statistical Humor: An Oxymoron? (PowerPoint)
• Fallacies in Numerical Reasoning (Best contributed paper JSM) (PowerPoint)
• Fallacies in Numerical Reasoning (Word document for student handouts)
• Simpson’s Paradox & Simpson’s 2nd Paradox (PowerPoint)
• Why Forensic Bite Mark Analysis Lacks Teeth (Word)
• Questions & Quotes About Statistics (Word)
• Question & Quotes About Statistics  (Jeopardy style PowerPoint)