I'd also like to throw my support behind this question from the BVD test bank. Too often my students come in with the mindset that all answers in a math class must be absolute (which isn't necessarily their fault!), and it is very difficult to break them of this habit.

 

The test questions that accompany the BVD text are GREAT for making sure that students understand the subtlties, and help to separate the "I can do the mechanics" students from the "I understand what is really going on" students (of course, that means that I know who to focus on so I can move students from the former camp to the latter camp). This frustrates them, but it's good for them. The world is uncertain, and stats is finally a class where students can express their uncertainty mathematically. It's a transition, but if you don't teach your students to see the subtlties in arguments and to write and think in a way that allows for natural variability, then Stats might as well be yet another math class - plug, chug, move on to the next question.

 

Carl Henriksen