While discussing course design for our mathematical modeling course in the Spring, my colleague recommended paging through Statistics Done Wrong.  I find the book’s description of the p-value useful: “A p value is … a measure of how surprised you should be if there is no actual difference between the groups, but you got data suggesting there is. … I can get a tiny p value by either measuring a huge effect – ‘this medicine makes people live four times longer’ – or by measuring a tiny effect with great certainty.”

The author explains statistical power via a coin-flipping example.  Given some number of coin-flips…

Random – to look up: hedonic treadmill.