This is a fun one we use to kick off scatterplots and regressions – specifically in the discussion about correlation coefficients.

1

The kids number from 1 to 12 on a piece of scratch paper, and we go through a slideshow of 12 celebrities

2, and the kids try to guess the age of each person/entity. Occasionally I’ll change out some of the names, but this year, the list went:

1. Oprah
2. George Clooney
3. Queen Elizabeth
4. The USA Today (the newspaper… as in, how long has it been in existence)
   3
   3
5. Mickey Mouse (including “Steamboat Willie”)
6. Anne Hathaway
   4
   4
7. Coach Mack Brown
   5
   5
8. My baby nephew (guess his age in months, not years)
   6
   6
9. Leo DiCaprio
   7
   7
10. Carrie Underwood
    8
    8
11. Tom Hanks
    9
    9
12. Will Smith
    10
    10

(If you want to try your hand… number from 1 to 12, hit the thumbnail above, and give it a shot! Here are the answers if you want to check, sans #8 — privacy concerns and all)

Once we get done, the kids get to see the actual ages, and — after gawking for a few moments — punch the numbers into our calculators and create a scatterplot of actual ages versus our guesses.

In theory, if every one of your guesses is on the dot, your r-value (aka, correlation coefficient) will be a perfect 1.0. (Of course, you could overestimate everyone’s age by a large constant and still get r = 1.0,

11 but heck, this is all for kicks.) We then have students share their r-values up on the board and share a decent laugh.

Every now and then, someone really overshoots “USA Today” and ends up with a negative r-value :)

We are well into week 8, and this much is crystal clear to me: There will be no easy weeks.

Every single Friday at 4:05 feels like a trophy-ceremony-worthy moment.

But I feel like in my fourth year of teaching stat, I’m finally getting it right.

12 Not that I felt like I did anything wrong, per se in even the first year… but… if you’re a perfectionist, you understand.

1. This is also another activity I got from Penny S. over at Westwood — again, not my concoction [↩]
2. MOSTLY celebrities, anyway [↩]
3. This is the one that universally screws people up. I once had a kid that guessed “4000”… which… well… not only predates the freaking USA, but perhaps predates the printing press? [↩]
4. My students tend to know her more as “Princess”… I tend to think of her as “Catwoman”. Hmmm… :) [↩]
5. Had to put him in this year cuz… well… he may not be our coach next year [↩]
6. I used to put my sister in for this one, but this inevitably leads to “Is she younger than you” which leads to “Wait HOW OLD ARE YOU?” and I prefer not to go there :) [↩]
7. This one always draws a collective “MMmmm yeahhh” from the females in the room… followed a bit later by a “Wait he’s HOW old?!?” [↩]
8. I used to have Faith Hill in this slot, but since Carrie took over the Sunday Night Football theme song duties….. [↩]
9. …who was excellent in “Captain Phillips”, by the way Excellent. [↩]
10. …who is, quite frankly, ageless. [↩]
11. …and there are still other ways to get everything terribly wrong and still get r = 1.0 [↩]
12. Maybe :) [↩]