When I try to get my head around complex concepts I find they generally stick better when they're explained as an analogy or anecdote. As I am getting deeper into various statistical techniques, I wondered whether anyone had some neat or favourite analogies they used to explain statistical concepts?
"A p-value is a measure of how embarrassing the data are to the null hypothesis" - Nicholas Maxwell
Hello Tyron, In my experience teaching statistics to university students in the sciences, statistical concepts are learned by interesting case histories with well worked out examples. I start with a few generalities, limited to no more than a few sentences: "Today I'd like to move from a single explanatory variable to multiple explanatory variables."
I then move quickly to a worked example. Then once students have the example, I use it to expand on the concept.
For the non-intuitive concept of the null hypothesis, I use a debate between Izaac Walton (caught 5 of the 6 fish caught by a party of 4 anglers). Izaac says it was skill, the others say it was 'just luck' (the null).
Recognizing that students have different ways of learning, I combine verbal and graphical expressions of a statistical concepts with formal expression, such as writing the model for regression together with a quickly drawn graph.
Students remember, even decades after the course, a physical demonstration. An example is bring a racquet ball and racquet to class to show precision vs accuracy. Or bring a mobile to class, to show nested versus crossed factors.
I have never had much luck with analogy. Students tack the analogy on to something other than what I had in mind.
There are a lot of misconceptions about probability and statistics, as for probability in order to move from the very boring coins and cards (that are very particular cases having more to do with simmetry than with probability given that are almost unique cases where we know exatly the reference set) and go into the De Finetti's 'honest bet' i.e. how much money you are willing to bet on the realization of an event.
This puts things in the correct realm of a subjective choice that is the basis of probabilistic approach...
Hello Tyron,
I have found interesting paper that somehow taps into your question. Please see the attached file
Best wishes
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