I can prove anything by statistics except the truth is a quote by British politician George Canning (1770 - 1827). The quote is found on page 587 of the 1908 book "Dictionary of Thoughts" edited by Tryon Edwards. The quote may be used to illustrate the idea that statistical inference is often geared toward demonstrating what is unlikely to be true rather than proving what is true.
February 9, 2010 T&L webinar presented by Hollylynne Lee (North Carolina State University) and Todd Lee (Elon University), and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). A model for probabilistic reasoning will be discussed that may support students' statistical reasoning. The development of the model and instructional implications are based on theoretical considerations and empirical results from work with middle grades students. Significant time for discussion is planned to get reactions to the model as well as to discuss aspects of probability that participants believe are foundational to building statistical literacy or reasoning.
This applet is designed to allow users to explore the relationship between histograms and the most typical summary statistics. The user can choose from several types of histograms (uniform, normal, symmetric, skewed, etc.), or can create their own by manipulating the bars of the histogram. The statistics available for display are mean, median, mode, range, standard deviation, and interquartile range. Also available is a "Practice Guessing" option, in which the values of the statistics are hidden until the user has entered guesses for each value.