You can gently introduce students to regression by having them use the following Excel¨ spreadsheets. The exercise is loosely based on the article
Garcia, C. & Garcia, M. T. R. (2004). Cinema and multiple regression. Teaching of Psychology, 31, 56-58.
The first spreadsheet provides students with data about 33films. The first column is the criticsÕ ratings for the film. The second column is the child friendliness of the film (on a 1 [friendly]to 5 [unfriendly] scale. The third column is the filmÕs box office success (on a 1-5 scale). The fourth column is our rating of the film: Students should replace our rating sof how much we liked the films with their own ratings.
The spreadsheet will then spit out 3 regression equations (one for each predictor)Ñand tell students how to plug in values to see their predicted liking of any of the given movies. Students are then shown how to compute a multiple regression for their data. You may wish to encourage students to replace the predictors (using friends' ratings, critics' ratings from the Intenet) and the criterion (Garcia and Garcia [2004] suggest using ratings of video games, songs, restaurants, or books).
The second spreadsheet helps students interpret the results of a multiple regression. Specifically, it helps students understand (a) the adjusted R2, (b) the meaning of statistical significance, (c) the need for a decent sample size, and (d) how to use a multiple regression equation to make predictions.
Spreadsheet One: Sample Data and Simple Regression
Spreadsheet Two: Interpreting the Results of a Multiple Regression Analysis
If you want to lecture on regression, you may want to base your lectures on these Powerpoint presentations.