Map of Happiness

This is a map of global levels of happiness, put together by a social psychologist at the University of Leicester. The original is found here. This could be useful for a discussion of how we measure things like "happiness," as well as the obvious correlation between levels of economic development and overall happiness of the population.

Thanks to Tracy R.!

Baby Got Stats

Okay, I know that many of our readers are NOT giant nerds, and even those of you that are giant nerds are not stats nerds... so for those of you that ARE stats nerds... giant stats nerds, I recommend the following:



Found on youtube via Wicked Anomie.

The first commenter to write a final exam based on this clip gets extra credit in our hearts. :)

The Millgram Experiment

The Millgram Experiment is a famous social psychological study conducted in the early 1960s in the shadow of the Holocaust. Designed to test obedience, it is widely understood to demonstrate that good people will sometimes do bad things if they are told to do so by someone in a position of authority. In Stanley Millgram's own words (according to the Wikipedia site):

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

-- "The Perils of Obedience" (1974)

Part One of Five


Part Two of Five


Part Three of Five


Part Four of Five


Part Five of Five


Thanks to Ang for noticing that this was on youtube!

Measuring Graduation Rates

This image is from a New York Times article on how different ways of measuring graduation rates produce very different results and turn out to be, no surprise, political.



The article discusses some of the varying measures and it, along with the image, could make for a great example in a Methods or Statistics class.

Illustrating Different Kinds Of Relationships

More entertaining figures for your methods classes! These are from Indexed and were suggested by Moonsinger. Thanks!

Positive:









Negative:



Positive and Negative:





U-shaped:







Bell curve:





No correlation:

Two Excellent Graphs Illustrating Increasing Income Inequality

This first graph shows the relative increase in the incomes (inflation adjusted) of the top 1% of income earning households, the middle 60% and the lowest 20% (percentages, presumably, approximate) since 1979.

This second graph shows a more detailed picture of the relative increase in the incomes (inflation adjusted) of households in the 95th , 80th, 60th, 40th, and 20th percentile since 1949. Note how household incomes were rising at about the same rate prior to 1970, at which point those households in the 95th percentile started out growing other percentiles, those in the 20th stayed stagnant, and those in between were somewhere in between.




I borrowed these graphs from Lane Kenworthy, who also offers a truly excellent and detailed explanation of the measures.


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Measurement Matters

The graph below shows the different results when using two different measures of joblessness (notice how the use of two different scales on these graphs--10% and 15%--visually interrupts a fair comparison). Visit the New York Times story that accompanied this image for a historically-grounded discussion of the problematics and politics of measuring joblessness.

Blame It On The Baby Boomers

Chris Uggen has a nice discussion of this graph (see here) showing the (it turns out more or less linear) change in drug use between 2001 and 2007. In particular, he offers a nice idea for how to use it to talk about the difference between cohort, age, and period effects.


Graph originally found here.

Popular Songs Represented In Figures And Charts

This post is dedicated to Gary Sandefur and all my other long lost UW karaoke kids.

If you teach methods, you might find these figures will add a little pizzazz to your discussions of how to present findings. They may not all be exactly, perfectly, like totally accurate. :)

Nelly - Air Force Ones:



Beck - Where It's At:


The Beatles - All You Need Is Love:


Aqua - Barbie Girl:


Prince - When Doves Cry:


Various Artists - Don't Cry For Me Argentina (why not Sinead O'Connor?)



Simon and Garfunkel - 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover



Notorious B.I.G. - Mo Money Mo Problems:



Kelis - Milkshake:



Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive:


Beastie Boys - Three MC's and One DJ:



Naughty By Nature - O.P.P.:


50 Cent - In Da Club:


All these and more can be found here and here.

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Some Graphs of Trends in Cosmetic Surgery

Growth in specific surgeries over the past 10 years
Most common surgeries by sex
General trend in cosmetic procedures over time
Most common procedures overall

All of these come from http://www.surgery.org/.

Graphic Manipulation

Here is a blog dedicated to showing how graphs and charts can be misleading, either intentionally or unintentionally. The examples are all graphs actually published (most in major media outlets), and the author points out deceptive distortions in axes, etc.