Dancing Statistics

Understanding statistical analysis lies at the core of understanding data and most research projects. But outside of the research world, where rigorous training is (or at least should be) required, these concepts are often confusing, or ignored altogether. This leads to all sorts of public misconceptions when it comes to understanding the results of the latest research.

As part of a public engagement project, the British Psychological Society has produced a lovely series of short films to help better educate all to basic statistical concepts. Using dance, the films cover the concepts of correlation, frequency distributions, sampling & standard error, and variance. Plus, one dancer occasionally busts out an excellent Robot, which is always appreciated.

David Crotty

@davidacrotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.