In class on 09/21/06, we talked a little bit about statistical graphics. One paper I read recently that motivated this discussion is "Three Things Statistics Textbooks Don't Tell You" by Seth Roberts, online here. It talks about how statistical graphics can help generate ideas. It's worth having a look at, although it might make more sense later in the course when we talk more about statistics and testing hypotheses. More generally, there is a whole literature on "Exploratory Data Analysis", originally developed by John Tukey. Tukey emphasized, among other things, using visual representations of data to come up with new hypotheses.
Here is a neat page on Statistical Visualization: "The Gallery of Data Visualization"
The example of an experimental economics study using the geometric distribution discussed in class is "Cooperative Behavior and the Frequency of Social Interaction" by John Duffy and Jack Ochs, which can be downloaded from John Duffy's research web page.