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Fitting Lines to Data
Against All Odds: Inside Statistics - S1 - E11
Winter snowpack in the Colorado Rockies can predict spring water supply. Plotting annual measurements in a scatterplot lets resource managers draw a regression line that helps them forecast water availability.
Against All Odds: Inside Statistics: Season 1 - 32 Episode s
1x1 - What Is Statistics?
August 10, 2020
Statistics is the art and science of gathering, organizing, analyzing and drawing conclusions from data. And without rudimentary knowledge of how it works, people can’t make informed judgments and evaluations of a wide variety of things encountered in daily life.
1x2 - Stemplots
August 10, 2020
As a first step in visualizing data, we use stemplots to understand measurements taken by the U.S. Army when they size up soldiers in order to design well-fitting gear and supplies for modern warfighters.
1x3 - Histograms
April 20, 2020
Meteorologists use histograms to map when lightning strikes and this visualization technique helps them understand the data in new ways.
1x4 - Measures of Center
April 19, 2021
It's helpful to know the center of a distribution — which is what the clerical workers in Colorado Springs found out in the 1980s when they campaigned for comparable wages for comparable work. Mean and median are two different ways to describe the center.
1x5 - Boxplots
April 26, 2021
Using the example of hot dog calorie counts, we use boxplots to visualize the five-number summary and make comparisons between different types of frankfurters.
1x6 - Standard Deviation
May 3, 2021
How can we compare sales at two franchises in the Wahoo's restaurant chain? Standard deviation helps us quantify the variability in sales.
1x7 - Normal Curves
May 10, 2021
A nature preserve that's tracked bird migrations through New England for decades records tons of bird-related data; everything from wingspan measurements to arrival dates provides examples of normal distributions.
1x8 - Normal Calculations
May 24, 2021
Visit the Boston Beanstalks club for tall people. Height is normally distributed and we can use membership cutoffs and population data to calculate z-scores.
1x9 - Checking Assumption of Normality
May 31, 2021
Production at Pete and Gerry's Organic Eggs provides a number of distributions that look normal — but are they?
1x10 - Scatterplots
June 7, 2021
Plotting annual numbers of Florida powerboat registrations and manatee killings suggests an uncomfortable relationship for the marine mammals.
1x11 - Fitting Lines to Data
May 18, 2020
Winter snowpack in the Colorado Rockies can predict spring water supply. Plotting annual measurements in a scatterplot lets resource managers draw a regression line that helps them forecast water availability.
1x12 - Correlation
June 21, 2021
Twin studies track how similar identical and fraternal twins are on various characteristics, even if they don't grow up together. Correlation lets researchers put a number on it.
1x13 - Two-Way Tables
July 12, 2021
One city surveyed the happiness of its residents. Two-way tables help organize the data and tease out relationships between happiness levels and opinions about aspects of the city itself.
1x14 - The Question of Causation
July 19, 2021
This historical story describes how researchers untangled the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.
1x15 - Designing Experiments
June 1, 2020
We move beyond observational studies — like one of marine life in the remote Line Islands — to designing experiments that manipulate various subject groups — as in the case of a medical study about osteoarthritis treatments.
1x16 - Census and Sampling
August 2, 2021
The U.S. counts every resident every ten years — or at least tries to. Statisticians use sampling from a population as an alternative to a complete count, as utilized at a potato chip factory.
1x17 - Sample and Surveys
June 8, 2020
A visit to the University of New Hampshire Survey Center illustrates how pollsters create accurate surveys. They can then use details from their sample to make inferences about a whole population.
1x18 - Introduction to Probability
June 9, 2020
Probability is the mathematics of chance behavior — and can help predict events such as the daily weather, or whether an asteroid will collide with Earth.
1x19 - Probability Models
June 22, 2020
Casinos are as well versed in probability as statisticians and probability models help them maintain the house advantage over gamblers.
1x20 - Random Variables
June 29, 2020
The Challenger space shuttle disaster was blamed on faulty O-rings. How can probability calculations on random variables help predict the chances of this kind of failure?
1x21 - Binomial Distributions
June 22, 2020
Sickle cell disease is an example of binomial distribution in families with two parents who are carriers for this genetic trait.
1x22 - Sampling Distributions
June 23, 2020
Heights of third graders in one class. Quality scores for circuit boards at a factory. Taking multiple samples allows us to visualize the sampling distribution of the sample mean.
1x23 - Control Charts
November 11, 2019
This quality control method helped Quest Diagnostics streamline and improve their system for processing and testing lab samples so they could meet their nightly deadlines.
1x24 - Confidence Intervals
February 26, 2018
A battery manufacturer tests just a sample of its product to verify its claims about battery life. A margin of error and a confidence level help quantify its accuracy.
1x25 - Tests of Significance
December 9, 2019
Is a newly-discovered poem really written by William Shakespeare? Using statistical analysis of his known word use, researchers set up null and alternative hypotheses to investigate.
1x26 - Small Sample Inference for One Mean
December 16, 2019
A brewer uses this technique to monitor quality differences in multiple batches of the same beer.
1x27 - Comparing Two Means
March 19, 2018
Comparing the activity and calorie expenditure levels of Western office workers and African hunter gatherers adds some surprising new data to the science of obesity.
1x28 - Inference for Proportions
February 22, 2021
Managers have no clue what conditions actually motivate their workers best, as shown by research conducted by Teresa Amabile, host of the original Against All Odds.
1x29 - Inference for Two-Way Tables
April 30, 2018
Host Dr. Pardis Sabeti's own research examines possible genetic resistance to deadly Lassa fever in West Africa. Using Inference for Two-Way Tables helps untangle potential relationships.
1x30 - Inference for Regression
March 8, 2021
Historical story of how statisticians built the case against DDT as the culprit behind plummeting peregrine falcon population numbers.
1x31 - One-Way ANOVA
February 17, 2020
Does holding a heavier clipboard make you estimate that a jar of coins has more money in it than if you're holding a lighter clipboard? Psychologists use One-Way ANOVA to analyze the data from this experiment.
1x32 - Summary
February 24, 2020
This review of the course through the preceding 31 modules provides an overview of the practice of statistics and helps students appreciate how statistical methods can help them better understand their world.