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a Physicist, a Biologist, and a Statistician see two people enter a house. After some time they see three people leave the house.
The Physicist says “My initial observation must have been incorrect.”
The Biologist says “The original two people must have reproduced...”
The Statistician says “If one more person enters the house, there will be no-one in the house.”
As Twain DIDN'T say: "liars, outliers, and out-and-out liars"! (Nor did Disraeli...)
*Thanks to Robert Dawson for submitting this twist on an old standard.
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A Bayesian and a Frequentist were to be executed. The judge asked them what were their last wishes. The Bayesian replied that he would like to give the Frequentist one more lecture. The judge granted the Bayesian's wish and then turned to the Frequentist for his last wish. The Frequentist quickly responded that he wished to hear the lecture again and again and again and again........
*Thanks to Xiao-Li Meng for this subtle humor.
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What do statistics professors get when they drink too much?
Kurtosis of the Liver!
*This one has been floating in my files unnoticed for sometime. A belated thank you goes out to David Coursey.
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Anyone who can not cope with mathematics (statistics) is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.
*This is a quote by Robert Heinlein with the parenthetical expression added by me. The question is how do these subhumans view mathematicians and statisticians?
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"When she told me I was average, she was just being mean".
* A big thanks for this quickee to Mike Beckman who is working on his Ph.D at Virginia Tech. Just wondered Mike if one of your professors told you this?
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Old statisticians never die they just become nonsignificant.
*This is my own quote. My students tell me I am only significant at the .10 level so how am I to interpret this?
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What's the question the Cauchy distribution hates the most?
Got a moment?
*This is only funny if you are steeped in mathematical statistics. Thanks go out to S. Gomatam for contributing this odd one.
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How many statisticians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
We really don't know yet. Our entire sample was skewed to the left!
*This is my own little gem. I hope this one doesn't go RIGHT by you.
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Did you know that if you torture the data long enough, that eventually it will confess?
*Does this include using the Chinese water torture? Thanks Cliff Lee from Caterpillar for passing this one my way.
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If the 2 nd momemt about the mean is the variance, the 3 rd moment is skewness, and the 4 th moment is kurtosis, what is the k th moment?
That's easy.... the k th moment is a KODAK MOMENT!!!
*I better pause a MOMENT and duck before I tell you this one is mine.
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What's the difference between a physicist, a mathematician, and a statistician?
The physicist calculates until he gets a correct result and concludes that he has proven a fact.
The mathematician calculates until he gets a wrong result and concludes that he has proven the contrary of a fact.
The statistician calculates until he gets a correct result about an obviously wrong proposition and concludes NOTHING, because the explanation is the task of the scientist who consulted the statistician.
*Thanks to Robert Hacker from Austria for this one. I hope I have not done damage to the underlying humor in the translation.
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A friend was bragging to a statistician over coffee one afternoon how two-day volatility in the stock market had treated his holdings rather kindly. He chortled, "Yeah... yesterday I gained 60% but today I lost 40% for a net gain of 20%."
The statistician sat in horrified silence. He finally mustered the courage and said, "My good friend I'm sorry to inform you but you had a net loss of 4%!!!"
* My little tale above illustrates how pervasive innumeracy is in our society. Always remember, "Percent of What?"
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I'm not an outlier; I just haven't found my distribution yet!
*Thanks to Ronan Conroy in Dublin, Ireland for this real cute one. I have also been searching for my distribution throughout my entire career.
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What do you get when you trade your Rolls Royce for a Chevrolet owned by Julia Childs?
You get CHEVYCHEF'S INEQUALITY!!!
*This may be my worst one so far. Please hold the tomatoes!
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A mathematician, applied mathematician and a statistician all apply for the same job. At the interview they are asked the question, what is 1+1. The mathematician replies, "I can prove that it exists but not that it is unique." The applied mathematician after some thought replies, "the answer is approximately 1.99 with an error in the region of 0.01." The statistician steps outside the room, mulls it over for several minutes, and eventually in desparation returns and inquires, "so what do you want it to be?"
*A big thank you goes out to Mike Greyling of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa for this revealing joke.
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Why is a physician held in much higher esteem than a statistician?
A physician makes an analysis of a complex illness whereas a statistician makes you ill with a complex analysis!
*This is my explanation of the vast pay differential between the two professions.
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What did the Box Plot say to the outlier?
"Don't you dare get close to my whisker!!"
*I had to dig very deep in the BOX to come up with this one.
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What did one regression coefficient say to the other regression coefficient?
I'm partial to you!
*A big thank you to James Jaccard of the State University of New York at Albany for sending me this tidbit.
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Why did the naive researcher stop at the lumber yard before analyzing his data?
A stuttering statistician told him, " A A... 2 x 4 A A...ANOVA wood...would be needed for his...his analysis."
*Thank goodness the poor researcher did not have to lug a bunch of 4 x 4 treated posts in his car! This is another home grown joke.
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Why did Yogi Bear become a statistician?
Because he discovered that truth could be inferred on the basis of bare facts.
*Thanks go out to Alfred M. Barron for this joke that is barely funny!
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Here is a cute variation of the light bulb joke:
How many statisticians does it take to change a light bulb?
100 - 1 to change the bulb and n-1 to test the replacement!!!
*It looks like a lot of statisticians to handle one light bulb! Thanks to William Tyler for sending me this all the way from Australia.
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A beautiful young woman was dating a mathematician and a statistician, and she knew she had to make a decision. The two young fellows knew of each other, and were all the time trying to impress her with their intelligence. The woman decided that she would put the two young men to a test, and the winner would be her husband. She brought them into a small room and explained to them, "I have decided to end this battle between you, and pick one of you for my life-long partner. You must pass a simple test which I have devised. In turn, I want each of you to stand on that side of the room, and I will stand on this side of the room. Every 10 seconds, I want you to walk half the distance between us towards me until you get to me. Once you get to me, I want you to give me a kiss."
The mathematician quickly thinks he has the answer to the test, and wants to be the first to proclaim it. "I refuse to do such a thing!" the mathematician said. "If I always walk half the distance toward you, I will never get to you. There will always be some distance left, no matter how small, and it can always be split in half!" The mathematician knows he has won, and smirks quietly to himself.
The statistician thinks for a second, and says, "I'll give it a whirl." So, he stands on the other side of the room from the young woman, and then walks half way to her. After 10 seconds, he walks half way to her again. Then again. Then again. After about 2 minutes, the statistician is face to face with the young woman, their noses almost touching. Suddenly, he grabs her and gives her a big kiss!
The mathematician shouts, "Hey! You can't do that! You weren't all the way there! You CAN'T ever get all the way there by going half way each time!"
The statistician replies, "Well, FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES, I was there!!!"
The young woman and the statistician were wed that next spring.
*This illustrates the inflexibilty of mathematicians and the pragmatism of statisticians. Charles Cwiek from the University of Tennessee sent me this cute little story. Many thanks Volunteer!
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Two statisticians and their accountant buddy were having lunch together one day at a top-secret government research installation in the desert. The two statisticians were discussing how that afternoon they would finish analyzing data from four groups of aliens captured from spacecrafts. The first statistician stated firmly that the experimentwise error rate should be controlled by using Tukey. The second statistician disagreed vigorously and replied that the experimentwise error rate should be controlled by using Bonferonni. Suddenly the accountant's face became white as a sheet. He yelled, "I always knew that experiment with aliens would get us into big trouble someday. Since the aliens are going to attack us this afternoon you are both dead wrong. The only way to control the AIR RAID is to use the installation's bomb shelter!!!! I'm out of here........"
*The above was inspired by a graduate student in an intermediate level class one day. After what I thought was a scintillating lecture on error rate, the puzzled student asked me at the end of the hour what an AIR RAID had to do with statistics.
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"My life is an experiment I never had a chance to properly design." -- Diana Ballard.
*Thanks to Diana for relating to all my readers her closely held secret. My question to Diana is, "What design would you now use if you had a chance to start your life over again?"
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You know how dumb the average person is? Well, by definition, half the population is dumber than that!
*Thanks to Barbara Kerr from Australia for sending me this. She told me that this not-terribly-nice aphorism is attributed to the fictitious Bob Dobbs of the Church of the Subgenius.
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What did the new statistics professor do when his lecture on analysis of variance flopped in front of a large class?
He had to go OVA ANOVA ANOVA it again!!!
*I have to feel sorry for the poor chap when he gets to repeated measures designs. I hope my little joke was not a big FLOP!!
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Knock! Knock!
Who's there?
Willie and Boris.
Willie Boris who?
Willie Boris with his stat lecture today?
*OK this one is really lame. But have any of you heard a "Knock! Knock!" statistics joke lately? This may be a first. Send me some and I will replace this with one of higher quality.
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One day the variance and the standard deviation were engaged in a heated argument over which was the better measure of variability.
The standard deviation shouted at the variance, "You are useless because you don't even relate to the original score scale."
The variance glared back and yelled, " Oh yeah! You are totally worthless because you are far too radical."
Just then the mean deviation stepped between the two indices and pushed them both back. In a proud voice the mean deviation proclaimed,"You are both wrong! I am ABSOLUTELY the best measure of variability since both of you would be worth ZERO if you didn't square your deviations!!!!"
*OK this may not bring down the house with laughter. I still have a place in my heart for the antiquated mean deviation because of its intuitive nature. I believe students can see a rationale for both S and S2 if MD is introduced first.
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Did you hear about the statistician who was about to analyze data gathered from a nudist colony? He didn't know whether to use a one or a two-tailed test!!!!
*This joke was told to me by my good friend and colleague Jazzbo Johnson a counseling psychologist in the Psychology Department at Illinois State University. He assured me that it meets all the standards for a PG rated joke!
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An engineer, consultant and statistician were driving down a steep mountain road in County Donegal one evening. All of a sudden the brakes failed and the car careened down the road out of control. But half way down, the driver somehow managed to stop the car by running it against the embankment narrowly avoiding going over a very steep cliff. They all got out, shaken by their narrow escape from death, but otherwise unharmed.
The consultant said: "To fix this problem we need to organise a committee, have meetings, write several interim reports and through a process of continuous improvement, develop a solution."
The engineer said: "No! That would take far too long, and besides that method never worked before. I have my trusty penknife here and will take apart the brake system, isolate the problem and correct it."
The statistician said: "No - you're both wrong! Let's all push the car back up the hill and see if it happens again. We only have an N of 1 here!!"
*Ah, replication is the life blood of a statistician. My daughter Vicki who works at Corporate McDonalds relayed me this cute joke.
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What is the difference between a statistician and a mortician?
Nobody's dying to see the statistician!
*Thanks to Tom Mortino from Nichols College for this morbid piece of humor.
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A statistician suddenly became despondent because he feared his five-year old computer was not Year-2000 compliant. Since statisticians by nature are frugal, he consulted a mail order catalog thinking he might find something within his price range. He was surprised to see just what he wanted on the very first page. The advertisement read, "The Little Red Devil specially priced at $10.00 until Jan.1, 2000! This exceptional machine is fully Y2K compliant and ships with SPSS pre-loaded. Hurry while supply lasts."
The statistician was overjoyed and immediately ordered the "The Little Red Devil."
When the package arrived in several days, he was quite concerned that it was very small and weighed only several pounds. Nevertheless, he quickly unwrapped the package and skimmed off all the peanut-foam packing. There cradled in the box staring him squarely in the face in all its splendor and glory was a red Etch-A-Sketch!!! Underneath the Etch-A-Sketch lie a single yellow sheet of technical Instructions.
The statistician angrily pulled the sheet out and began reading the list of troubleshooting questions and answers.
THE LITTLE RED DEVIL-MODEL Y2K
Q: My Little Red Devil has all of these funny little lines all over the screen.
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I turn off my Little Red Devil?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I create a New Document Window?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I set the background and foreground to the same color?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: Why is there only 2K of memory?
A: This is just enough to recharge the magnetic field every 1000 years.
Q: How do I launch SPSS with my Little Red Devil?
A: Shake it, Put it down, Shake it again, and then Shake it once more vigorously.
Q: What is the proper procedure for rebooting my Little Red Devil?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I delete a document on my Little Red Devil?
A: Pick it up and shake it.
Q: How do I save a document on my Little Red Devil?
A: Don't shake it.
Finally, if you have any further questions not covered by the above, call our toll-free hot line at 1-800-SHAKEIT.
By now the statistician was furious and he slammed the Etch-A-Sketch to the ground and shattered the high resolution screen into thousands of pieces. He boiled for several minutes then went directly to his study closet, tugged on a musty box, and pulled out his heavy Marchant rotary calculator from the 1960's!!
*Just had to get a Y2K joke into the Gallery before this whole page evaporates into the ether on January 1. A big thank you to Alan Kline from the HERKY listserv for suggesting a similar joke which I took the liberty to modify extensively.
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Did you hear about the statistics professor that suddenly turned bearish and sold off all his stocks?
His department chair told him that severe grade inflation had occurred in his courses and interest rates among the students had skyrocketed!!!
*The poor professor should have consulted with Dr. Greenhouse, er pardon me, Dr. Greenspan before taking such a conservative approach!!! This is my contribution to get the year 2000 rolling.
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A One-Way ANOVA and a Two-Way ANOVA were talking shop one day. The One-Way said, "I sure do envy the interaction you have with your variables."
The Two-Way frowned and replied, "Yah, but the minute it diminishes to any significant extent they really become independent and go their own separate ways."
*Bet you didn't know that ANOVAS could talk! I had to get their permission to print this.
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There were four technicians travelling in a car, until it broke down.
The statistician was the first to react and proclaimed to his colleagues that there was no problem. "Let me explain. The car works fine. It is 6 years old, has run up 200,000 miles, and the engine has run perfectly for 5000 hours. The problem is experimental error and should be forgotten about!"
The second technician, being a mechanical engineer, and not so easily fooled decided the alternator was malfunctioning. Unable to fix it, he turned to his colleague the electrical engineer for help.
This guy decided that the ignition was the problem, but after some tinkering was also unable to fix the problem.
Finally, the computer scientist smugly looked at the other technicians and calmly suggested that everyone should get out of the car, then get back inside again!!
*Is this like erasing a corrupted hard drive and reinstalling a corrupted operating system? Many thanks to Patrick DuBoucher from Cork Ireland who sent me this joke and signed my guestbook as "student." Hmm, I wonder if a t-test would have fixed the car??
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Did you hear the one about the sign outside the statistics lab?
"DANGER Enter at your own risk. Informavore feeding frenzy in progress."
*Thanks to Bill Shelton for sharing this cute little joke with us. Is an informavore similar to a carnivore?
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Two students were walking out of statistics class one day. One was grinning ear to ear and the other was frowning woefully. The one that was grinning said, " Boy the instructor sure gave an inspired lecture on hypothesis testing today. He said that out of the four outcomes that can occur when you test the null hypothesis, two are correct decisions and two are errors. He praised this procedure as the Holy Grail of statistical analysis."
The other student looked at his classmate in dismay. He stated, "Well I certainly was not impressed with his lecture and totally disagree with him. ANY STATISTICAL PROCEDURE FOR MAKING A CORRECT DECISION THAT IS NO BETTER THAN FLIPPING A COIN IS PRETTY BAD!!!"
*This discussion would make Neyman turn over in his grave. Please Sir Ronald don't force me to reject or not reject my joke!!!
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A traveler trudged down a dusty road alongside a pasture. Seeing a shepherd shouting and whistling at his sheepdog rounding up a flock of sheep, the traveler shouted "I BET YOU A HUNDRED BUCKS AGAINST ONE OF YOUR SHEEP I CAN GUESS THE SIZE OF YOUR FLOCK."
The shepherd agreed to the bet. The traveler then yelled loudly, "Nine hundred forty two," exactly the number in the flock.
The traveler then picked out his prize and trudged down the road, but the shepherd shouted after him: "I BET I KNOW WHAT YOU DO!"
The traveler agreed to another wager about this matter, and the shepherd then stated, "You're a STATISTICIAN."
The traveler was startled. "How did you know?????"
The shepherd replied, "Well, put down my dog, and I'll tell you."
*Thanks to George Moxley of Virginia Commonwealth University for contributing this joke to the Gallery. Most of my friends failed to see any humor in this anecdote. I guess only statisticians with a sheepdog would understand the levity here!
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In a statistics class an instructor had just delivered what he thought was a very scintillating presentation on two-variable regression analysis. He looked up from the glare of the overhead projector and noticed that a student in the back of the classroom was in a semi-snooze. This proved too much for the instructor's ego and he scowled angrily at the student. He said," Young man I want you to answer a question about this problem. For a person with an X-value of 45, is the predicted Y-value above or below the subgroup Y-mean?"
The dazed student looked up for ten seconds then responded,"Yes."
The instructor could not believe his ears and quickly snapped back, "Young man this is not a yes-no question! Just say above or below."
The student responded, "Above or below!"
The instructor answered, "Yes."
The student was wide awake now and retorted, "SIR, THAT WAS MY ORIGINAL ANSWER."
*Thanks to my colleague and good friend Elmer Lemke for reminding me of this answer he once got on a comprehensive examination. Of course, I took the liberty to augment and embellish this story.
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One day a consulting statistician just remembered that a client was waiting for a set of frequency poylgon CHARTS.They needed to be delivered immediately. Since the weather was humid and sticky the statistician threw on a tee-shirt and some wrinkled SHORTS and rushed out the door. Somewhat discombombulated, he jumped into his car and roared down the road at a high rate of speed. As he rounded a sharp curve, he suddenly took one hand off the wheel and his car veered out of control and tumbled into the ditch. The poor statistician was seriously injured.
Why in the world did a statistician take such a risk and take one hand off the wheel?
He just remembered that he wanted to do some FREE-HAND SMOOTHING OF HIS SCHARTS!
*Why didn't the statistician just touch them up with an iron before he left? I guess I may also need to touch up my jokes from now on since my friends failed to crack a smile on this one!
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We all have heard that statisticians lie with statistics. What do insomniacs do with statistics?
They kick them out of bed!!!!
*Does that mean insomniacs never count sheep? I hope you like my twist to this old notion about statisticians.
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As a biologist, a physicist, and a statistician are riding on a train through Wisconsin, they pass a herd of cows, one of which is completely white. "Oh look, there are white cows in Wisconsin," says the biologist. "You mean," says the physicist with an air of superiority, "there is at least one white cow in Wisconsin." "No," says the statistician, "there is at least one cow in Wisconsin that's white on at least one side!"
*This is a new slant on an older stat joke! Thanks to Steve George of Amherst College who was told this by the late Julian Gibbs a chemist and former president of Amherst.
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Five statisticians were selected by the World Unified Statistical Society (WUSS) to participate in a four-week televised reality program. The stakes were high with the survivor receiving a million dollar check and a Cray Super Computer. These statisticians represented the very best minds in their subfields and were picked on the basis of their uncanny abilities to utilize divergent thinking. The five were a Biometrician, a Psychometrician, an Actuary, a Pollster, and a Professor of Statistics. Each was given a pocket calculator and a box of Ritz crackers and airlifted to a small uninhabited atoll in the South Pacific. Each week for three weeks one statistician was voted off the island and at the end of the fourth week the entire membership of WUSS voted on the winner from the remaining twosome. Can you pick the survivor and ultimate champion?
THERE WERE NO SURVIVORS!!! After the third day all had perished and the program was cancelled. The million dollars was given to Statisticians Anonymous (SA) and the Cray Computer was donated to Good Will Industries.
* What a sad ending to such a valiant effort by this prestigious organization to publicize the statistical profession!!! Oh, I just remembered I let my membership in WUSS lapse last year.
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A prisoner had just been sentenced for a heinous crime and was returned to his cell. An inquisitive guard could not wait to ask him about the outcome.
Guard:"What did you get for a sentence?"
Prisoner: "I could choose life or 100 years."
Guard: "And what did you choose?"
Prisoner: "Well, life, obviously. Statistically speaking that is shorter."
*This convict obviously knew a little about statistics but was lacking in common sense. Thanks go out to Coen Bernaards from UCLA for sending this one my way.
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What is the difference between an introverted and extraverted statistician?
The introverted statistician stares DOWN at his shoes whereas the extraverted statistician stares OVER at your shoes!!!
*Well you have to admit the angle of sight has been elevated a tad but then statisticians are a pretty repressed profession. However, I can take great comfort in what a wise man once said, "You can tell a lot about the character of a man by the appearance of his shoes." For all you so-called "Experts on Shoes" try this little fun test The New and Improved Expert Shoe Salesperson Quiz.
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Have you heard about the statistics joke gone horribly wrong?
Even the undergrads could understand it!!
*Hmmh! I always thought the critical attribute of a good statistics joke was its backward compatibility with undergraduates. Oh well!! A big thanks to Kathleane Kaczor a biology major at USU for sharing this bit of humor even though she was shocked that I liked it.
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Three ladies, formerly roommates at college met monthly for lunch. This month's topic of conversation turned to catching husbands. Sue said she was going to take advantage of the upcoming 3-day weekend to fly to Acapulco and scout the pool at Club Med. Julie said she was going to bite the bullet and sign herself up at one of those video dating services. Kate said she was flying to Chicago for the International Conference of Statisticians. Sue looked puzzled; Julie said, "Huh?" Kate responded by telling them that 86% of Statisticians were single males under the age of 37. Sue said, "Wow! Odds are good!" Julie said, "Yeah, but the goods are odd."
*I love this little joke! Darryl Fiorina sent me this and I really wanted to thank him but he included an invalid email address. If you are out there Darryl please contact me or I may have to conclude that you are odd goods!!
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A statistician always HAS SOMETHING TO SAY with numbers while a politician always HAS TO SAY SOMETHING with numbers!
*The late Dr. James B. Stroud of the University of Iowa and the 2000 presidential election inspired me to write this truism. Maybe I should hide behind a BUSH so I won't get GORED!!
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A man was in a hot-air balloon. Soon he found himself lost with nothing but green fields for as far as the eye could see. Eventually, he happened to float over a man who was walking his dog.
He leaned over the basket and yelled out, "Hello! Where am I?"
The man on the ground replied, "You're about 20 feet above the ground in a hot- air balloon."
The balloonist cursed him and shouted back, "You must be a statistician."
"Why do you say that?" asked the man on the ground.
"Well," shouted the balloonist, "You're absolutely correct but your answer was completely useless."
"Oh I see," replied the walker, "And you must be a manager."
"Actually, you're right," said the balloonist. "How did you know?"
"Well," said the walker, "First you were lost. Then, after working out what information you needed to sort yourself out, you asked someone else to get it for you. Now, that you have the information, you're still lost, but it's someone else's fault."
*This clever little twist on an earlier joke was sent to me by Gareth Jones of the University of Manchester in the UK. Three cheers for the statistician's quick retort.
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THE TRUE BELL CURVE - The distribution of SUCCESS in life in relationship to AGE follows a true bell curve (Modified July 8, 2005):
At age 5 success is not peeing in your pants
At age 10 success is having friends in many many places
At age 16 success is having a driver's license and no moving violations
At age 20 success is having sex but harboring a variety of anxieties about it
At age 35 success is having money to pay cash for a turbocharged Porsche Carrera GT
At age 50 success is having money to pay cash for a turbocharged Porsche Carrera GT
At age 65 success is having sex but harboring a variety of anxieties about it
At age 70 success is having a driver's license and no moving violations
At age 75 success is having friends in many many places
At age 80 success is not peeing in your pants
*Thanks again to my colleague Jazzbo Johnson for suggesting this hilarious joke as it was related to him by a friend. It is displayed in gold because it represents the century mark for this Joke Gallery. What a milestone for this site! When I first conceived the notion of a Statistics Joke Gallery about four years ago there probably existed less than a handful of such jokes. At the time I thought that if 25 jokes could be accumulated in five years it would be a huge success. But WOW! We have now reached 100 and the site has become the envy of the statistical profession. Many thanks to all the contributors and keep the jokes coming.
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ARGUING WITH A STATISTICIAN IS A LOT LIKE WRESTLING WITH A PIG. AFTER A FEW HOURS YOU BEGIN TO REALIZE THE PIG LIKES IT.
*We now know that statisticians, among their many other outstanding talents, are also skilled debaters. Thanks go out to Steve Carlson of Bedford, NH for forwarding this joke to me.
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THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF STATISTICS:
Albert Einstein died, and found himself on the train to heaven. In his car, there were four men sitting on separate benches. He walked up to the first who said, "Hello! My name is Bob, and I have an IQ of 186." Einstein smiled brilliantly, and said "Ah-hah! We shall discuss quantum physics together!"
The second man greeted him with "Hello, sir. My name is Edward, and my IQ is 150." Einstein smiled, replying "Excellent! We shall discuss mathematics together."
Moving on, Einstein shook hands with the third man, who said, "Hello; my name is William, and my IQ is 119." Smiling again, Einstein replied "Very good! We shall talk together about European history."
The last man looked up glumly as Einstein approached, and said "Hi, my name's Chuck, and my IQ's only 87." Einstein replied sadly "I see-- we shall have to discuss statistics."
* Hmmh! I wonder if Einstein was really dissing the statistical profession or intent on giving Chuck a lesson on the Gaussian curve and telling him gently why he could never become a Gauss? Many thanks to John Schafer for including this joke when he signed my Guestbook.
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A LOTTERY IS A TAX ON PEOPLE WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND STATISTICS!!
*How True!! How True!! Thanks go out to Alvaro Montenegro Garcia for this contribution.
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A physicist, a geologist, and a statistician are talking about whose field is the most fundamental. The geologist says his is because it starts with the creation of the Earth. The physicist says his is the most fundamental because his field starts with the chaos in the universe even before the Earth was formed. The statistician smugly says, "And who do you think caused the chaos?"
*Gee, I spent my entire career teaching students a tool that breeds chaos. I would much prefer to think that I taught them something that created well organized mayhem!! (Only kidding). Anyway, thanks to Arnie Diamond for sending me this joke.
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A researcher asked an experienced statistician what procedure should be used to obtain the correlation between two normally distributed variables that were artificially dichotomized. Why did the researcher suddenly rush from the statistician's office and run straight to the pharmacy to buy a bottle of carbon tet cleaning fluid?
The statistician told him a TETRACHORIC SOLUTION was appropriate for his problem!!!
*If you don't get this joke don't despair. The tetrachoric coefficient is legitimate but is rarely used in modern practice. I happen to own a crumpled original monograph by Thurstone that presents a table for computing this index. Any bidders out there before I auction the item on Ebay?
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Why are the mean, median, and mode like a valuable piece of real estate?
LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!
*All you beginning students of statistics just remember that measures of central tendency are all POINTS on the score scale as oppposed to measures of variability which are all DISTANCES on the score scale. Understand this maxim and you will always know where you are LOCATED!
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Why did the statistician do such a horrid job of laying tile on his bathroom floor?
He incorrectly PARTITIONED SOME OF THE SQUARES!!
*This explains why you never see a statistician's bathroom featured in BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS!
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Why did the Statisticians trounce the Accountants by a score of 56-0 in their annual football game?
The Statisticians employed a BALANCED DESIGN in their offense and effectively used risk in their playbook whereas the Accountants ran only one play ENDRUN and kept risk entirely OFF their playBOOK!!!
*I just had to get this dig in at the Accountants. Statisticians may look down at their shoes a lot but they are only verifying they are on a good foundation.
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A young woman is telling her friend about a new man she is dating. The friend says, "What does he do for a living?"
"He's a statistician," the first girl replies.
"A statistician? Wallowing in numbers all day? He must be awfully boring!" says the friend.
"We-ell," says the first girl defensively, "It's not the numbers that matter. I Love what he does with them."
*Erica Heffernan sent this joke to me all the way from Sydney, Australia to conteract some of the "lame" jokes in the Gallery. Thanks, Erica but I may have to mail you a single crutch for this one. Any comments from the readers?
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A friend of mine told me the other day that my statistics students must really hate me. The friend informed me that a student complained to him that my last test was so hard that EVERYONE scored below the mean and even the standard deviation was NEGATIVE! The student, however, told my friend he was a wee bit optimistic. His score was so low that he just knew that it would regress toward the mean on the next test!!
*Well, I am proud that my test set two new world records in the annals of statistics. On the other hand, maybe I should carefully go over the teaching notes that cover these topics. Anyway, a big thank you goes out to Steven C. Marcus for suggesting this joke. Steve, I hope you don't mind the embellishments that were tacked on.
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Why were so many CEOs who held doctorates in accounting fired in 2002 from their companies?
They used "COOKBOOK" texts in their stat courses and decided to practice their "DOCTORING" skills!!
*I really do not want to blame the collegiate accounting programs for all the corporate woes of America. The indiscretions are probably due to simple red-green color blindness or maybe the failure to recognize the existence of a negative number. On second thought, could it just be old-fashioned greed?
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Did you hear about the time Pearson was caught for talking out of turn at a statistical conference about discordant relationships?
I guess he was accused of taking Yule's Q!
*Wow! This has to be one of the most obscure indices you will ever find in the statistical literature. However, one could always say, "IT WAS THERE FOR THE TAKING." Thanks to John Hansen, a doctoral student at Indiana University, for sending this rare gem.
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Who is the most famous Statistician?
George Washington. He claimed he never told a lie and got away with it!
*This is a cute little twist on an old standard. My thanks go out to Hal Ashburner from down under in Sydney, Australia for sending me this nifty little tweek.
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Did you hear about the eccentric Statistics Professor that ran frantically through a hotel lobby wearing only Jockey briefs with a cell phone in one hand?
He was desparately looking for a bathrobe. His stock broker had just called him and warned him to COVER HIS SHORTS!!!!
*The current 2002 bear stock market inspired me to write this little quip. It seems that when we have a rare up day it is attributed to investors covering their shorts. I knew I should have taken that job with Jockey Underwear a year ago selling shorts door-to-door!!!
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What's black, brown and red and looks good on a Statistics Professor?
A Doberman.
*Now that is strange. I thought a Doberman was a fine cashmere sweater! Anyway, thanks again to Hal Ashburner for this rather sick joke.
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A patient asked his surgeon what the odds were of him surviving an impending operation. The doctor replied they were 50/50 but he'd be all right because the first fifty had already died!!
*There are a lot of variations of this theme floating around. It reminds me of the coin flipping experiment where a gambler is certain that a tail must appear after ten straight heads. Anyway, thanks to Peter Davies from Oxon in the UK for sending me this little tidbit.
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STATISTICS IS THE TAMING OF RANDOMNESS.
*Aha! Now I know the raison d'etre for our beloved field. I wonder, however, if statistics had never evolved, would the earth still be a primordial swamp? Thanks Dietrich Trenkler from the University of Osnabruck for this insightful contribution.
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A statistics professor was completing what he thought was a very inspiring lecture on the importance of significance testing in today's world. A young nursing student in the front row sheepishly raised her hand and said, " But sir, why do nurses have to take statistics courses?"
The professor thought for a few seconds and replied, "Young lady, statistics saves lives!"
The nursing student was utterly surprised and after a short pause retorted, "But sir, please tell us how statistics saves lives!"
"Well," the professor's voice grew loud and somewhat angry, "STATISTICS KEEPS ALL THE IDIOTS OUT OF THE NURSING PROFESSION!!!"
*I was always told by professors in other disciplines that statistics was the ultimate screening device. The frequency of occurence of this question in my introductory statistics course prompted me to write this joke. I think it is wonderful that statistics truly does save lives but how can I give this response to a music therapy major?
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A consulting statistician and his client sat down together for the first time.
Client: "I desparately need your help interpreting the significant three-way interaction in this factorial ANOVA. What are your fees?"
Statistician: "One hundred dollars for three questions."
Client: "Isn't that a little steep?"
Statistician: "Not really! Now what is your third question?"
*The client's third question was probably "Where is the door"? This is a sad situation where lack of two-way interaction prevented the discussion of three-way interaction! Yes, I admit this one is all mine!
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The statistician was asked by his friend why he always used the urinal on the far end.
He replied: "Oh, that is a no brainer. There is half the probablity of being sprayed by someone else."
*Once again this illustrates how repressed statisticians are. They would never be caught in the middle of a group for fear the person on either side would strike up a conversation. Thanks to Graeme Quinlan from Australia for passing this on.
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A statistics professor dies and so the test scheduled for that day is cancelled.
A student rings the department at 5 minute intervals to ask if the test is on. The guy answering the phone asks him, "Why the bloody hell are you ringing so often? I've told you 16 times the professor has passed away! What are you doing, some sort of research, are you experimenting on me? What the bloody hell is it?"
"Nah, the student replies, no research. I just like to hear you say it."
*This ia another Hal Ashburner joke from down under. It sure makes statisticians feel unwanted!
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How many tents will a campground hold?
Ten tenths since that adds up to a whole!!
*Sorry I lost the attribution on this one. However, you may wonder what this has to do with statistics. A possible incorrect answer to this question would be "one tenth (tent)" since in a one-way analysis of covariance with one covariate, the pooled within groups regression coefficient is not obtained by adding the seperate regression coefficients within each group but rather by dividing the pooled numerators of each of the within group coefficients by the pooled denominators of each of the within group coefficients. In our example, using regression-type pooling, 1/10 + 1/10 + 1/10 +... for ten terms = 10/100 or 1/10 but that is absurd! Now isn't that special! I am sure you followed me. Is it any wonder that students have trouble with statistics when they are presented with esoteric "word salad" like the above. Please don't take my ramblings seriously. I am only having FUN!!!
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What do you call a tea party with more than 30 people?
A Z party!!!
*This is a great one from Stacey Ecott. I always thought a Z party was a roomful of slumbering statisticians listening to a keynote address at a convention.
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"It has now been proven beyond a doubt that smoking is the major cause of statistics."
-Author Unknown
*Huh? It seems to me that I recall hearing another version of this statement. However, this certainly supports my opening paragraph in the Gallery that godzillions of statistics are created every day. Many thanks to Michele McIndoe for sending me this quote.
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Two random variables were gossiping and thought they were discrete by whispering but I heard their chatter continuously.
*Thanks go out to Dan Hayden for sending me this cute variation of a segment of Joke #28. However, Dan was discrete by not sending me his affiliation.
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Two world famous statisticians and a not so famous statistician were slowly wandering on the ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. All three were tired and their faces were aged and wrinkled from their long productive and exhaustive careers. Each wanted to show the others where the steel cache of his most celebrated work was buried in the sand. The first, R. A. Fisher located his marker and dug with trembling hands a six-foot hole and found his treasure...a reinforced heavy box containing sheet after sheet of journal studies using his Least Significant Difference (LSD) technique. All three smiled smugly and celebrated with muffled mumblings. The second, J. W. Tukey led the weary men about a mile further and spotted his marker. He dug furiously with every ounce of strength he could muster another six-foot hole. To no one's surprise, his prize box was uncovered with published paper after paper of results using his Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) method. All three again smiled smugly and celebrated with muffled mumblings. The group was now staggering in the sand and suffering severe thirst from the desert heat. However, the third statistician known only as Winsor, pleaded with the other two to go just a ways further. They reluctantly agreed and sure enough after a half mile, Winsor became elated and THOUGHT he spotted his marker. He began to slowly claw and toss the sand aside. After three hours he reached the six-foot depth ... but no cache. His mottled face was sweating from fatigue but he continued for another six feet...but alas, no cache. Winsor's body was now shaking violently from exhaustion but he insisted on going a final six feet (Eighteen feet in all). He pawed and flailed for six more hours and finally collapsed at the bottom ot the hole...but no hint of a cache. At the top of the hole Fisher and Tukey lay prostrate. They choked and sputtered obsenities for several minutes. Applications of the Winsorized Major Difference procedure were nowhere to be found!
The Lesson of This Story: NO WMD'S COULD BE FOUND....IT WAS ALL A MIRAGE!!!!
*I must admit to taking full responsibility for this unsettling tale. Isn't it strange that all the LSD's and HSD's were found but nary a WMD? Poor Winsor should have focused on his truncated distributions rather than attempt to produce WMD's!!
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Day of the quiz:
Professor: "OK students, you have fifteen minutes to plot the bivariate distribution between A and B, fifteen minutes to compute the correlation between A and B, and 5 SECONDS to compute the kurtosis of B."
One student stands up very worried: "Excuse me Professor, how can we posssibly compute a kurtosis in 5 SECONDS?"
The Professor looks at the class very reassuring: "No need to be worried, kids, IT TAKES ONLY A MOMENT!!"
*Sorry this joke got lost in my notes. But, I want to take this moment to thank Marcello Galluccci of the Free University in the Netherlands for this little tidbit of humor.
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Why did the statistician take Viagra?
Since his sample was large, he did not want to be rejected with a small p-value and be declared practically nonsignificant!!
*Thanks to Philip J. Politis from the URI Fisheries Department for passing this joke along. However, I will not touch this with a ten-foot pole.
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A statistics professor was describing sampling theory to his class, explaining how a sample can be studied and used to generalize to a population. One of the students in the back of the room kept shaking his head. "What's the matter?" asked the professor. "I don't believe it," said the student, "why not study the whole population in the first place?" The professor continued explaining the ideas of random and representative samples. The student still shook his head. The professor launched into the mechanics of proportional stratified samples, randomized cluster sampling, the standard error of the mean, and the central limit theorem. The student remained unconvinced saying, "Too much theory, too risky, I couldn't trust just a few numbers in place of ALL of them." Attempting a more practical example, the professor then explained the scientific rigor and meticulous sample selection of the Nielsen television ratings which are used to determine how multiple millions of advertising dollars are spent. The student remained unimpressed saying, "You mean that just a sample of a few thousand can tell us exactly what over 250 MILLION people are doing?" Finally, the professor, somewhat disgruntled with the scepticism, replied, "Well, the next time you go to the campus clinic and they want to do a blood test...tell them that's not good enough ...tell them to TAKE IT ALL!!"
*This has to rank with the very best of the stat jokes and is also very instructive. Many thanks go out to Kenn(Doc) Finstuen for sending me this jewel. Kenn, who is a consulting statistician from San Antonio, Texas sent me a package of materials several years ago that were misplaced until recently. Sorry Kenn, this should have been in the Gallery much earlier.
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In China, even if you are a one out of a million kind of guy, there are thousands more just like you!!
*Gee this is sad. In the US I would settle for being a one out of a thousand kind of statistician and know there are not thousands more like me. Thanks to Dennis Lankin from the UC at Berkeley for this play upon numbers.
yihui
先顶了再看!
neige
老大这么给面子,那我再贴,供大家休闲时看看,有的joke也能学到东西。。。
In China, even if you are a one out of a million kind of guy, there are thousands more just like you!!
*Gee this is sad. In the US I would settle for being a one out of a thousand kind of statistician and know there are not thousands more like me. Thanks to Dennis Lankin from the UC at Berkeley for this play upon numbers.
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A new Ph.D statistician had just taken a position with the Bureau of Standards. One of his first tasks was to familiarize himself with the volumes of measurement standards for the vast array of objects in the world. He was immediately curious about his own profession and looked up "statistician." Among the list of physical characteristics, he came across a shocking figure...The mean weight of all statisticians in the world is 3 POUNDS. He gasped in disbelief. He thought surely this was a typographical error and that the first two digits had been omitted. Then he squinted and noticed a small asterisk by this figure. He quickly directed his eyes to the bottom of the page. He sighed a breath of relief as the footnote boldly stated, "INCLUDES URN."
*I think this easily EARNS a grade of "A" as a statistician joke. I now understand why textbooks and instructors are obsessed with examples of drawing Balls from Urns when probability theory is introduced. If you think this a lame joke, I will take all the blame but remember I am an Odd Ball that has always drawn Chips from Bowls.
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What is a triple-blinded, completely randomized case-control clinical drug trial?
One in which the patients do not know which drug treatment they are receiving, the nurses do not know which drug treatment they are administering, and the physicians conducting the study do not know what they are doing!!!
*I have always wondered why physician's recommendations from medical research studies change almost every six months. Thanks to Kenn Finstuen from Texas for another dandy. This should immediately be recognized by Stanley and Campbell in their work that classifies types of experimental designs.
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I.R.S. statistics show that the average American now works 3 and 1/2 hours every day for the government, which comes out to 1 and 1/2 more hours than civil servants do!!
*This is really a shocker. I always knew civil employees were underpaid but there now appears to be a fringe benefit. I am sorry I don't have an attribution on this neat comparison.
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Democrats believe there is only one poll that matters...It takes place on Election Day.
Republicans also believe there is only one poll that matters...However, it takes place in Florida on Election Day.
Statisticians regretfully throw up their hands in despair because they concede what REALLY matters is a biased poll with a sample size of nine... The members of the Supreme Court!!!
*I will take full responsibility for creating this one. The question is could it happen again??
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A naive researcher approached a statistician one day about analyzing some data.
Researcher: "How do I test the difference between four treatment group means?"
Statistician: "Perform an Analysis of Variance."
Researcher: "But I don't want to test the difference in the group variances!"
Statistician: "You aren't! You are comparing the ratio of the variation between the group means to the combined variation within the groups to see if it is beyond chance."
Researcher: "You simply don't understand. You persist in talking about variation which does not interest me in the least!"
Statistician(Exasperated and Angry): "O.K. I have an alternative for you which is called the Interocular Test. Just examine any difference in the means and if it STRIKES YOU RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES, declare it significant!!!"
*Isn't it rather ironic that the significance of the differences between a set of means can be tested by the ratio of two variances? Sir Ronald Fisher was very cagey when he perfected this seemingly contradictory procedure. This little story is my own so you know where to shoot the barbs.
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A ONE-WAY ANOVA shouted at a TWO-WAY ANOVA: "STOP! Turn around - You are going the wrong way!"
The TWO-WAY ANOVA yelled back: "Sorry! I will turn when I see an interaction!"
*Well, maybe ANOVA's should be required to pass a drivers test. Who would have dreamed ANOVA's would be driving fancy cars in the 21st Century. The attribution on this one points a one-way arrow at yours truly!
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Statistics play an important role in genetics. For instance, statistics prove that numbers of offspring is an inherited trait. If your parent didn't have any kids, odds are you won't either.
*This is a neat little quip. Thanks Hugh W. Graham, a Quality Engineer from Abbott, for passing this one along.
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Three of the Most Embarassing Outcomes for a Statistician and Their Workarounds:
(1) Result: The intercorrelations between a fairly large set of variables has exactly 5% of the coefficients that are significant at the .05 level. Solution: Try to remain upbeat. Lighten up and use the .10 level of significance and stress to the readers that these results represent an early exploratory study!
(2) Result: In a 3x3x4x4x5 Factorial ANOVA the Five-Way Interaction turns up significant at the .01 level. Solution: Curse under your breath that you used a five-factor design. Then instruct your graduate assistant to conduct FIVE Four-Way ANOVAs, one for each of the five levels of the 5th independent variable, to take two aspirin, and call back in the morning!
(3) Result: The F-test for a One-Way ANOVA with five treatment groups is significant at the .05 level but NONE of the pairwise comparisons between the five means is significant. Solution: Cry hard and then work your tail off to find some obscure, meaningless complex comparison that is significant such as the average of the first three treatment means is significantly different from the average of the last two treatment means!
*The above are my own dreaded results. I am sure the readers have their own convoluted and shocking statistical anomalies. Please email me your most feared and or realized statistical outcome and I will put it in the Gallery.
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Variance is what any two statisticians are at. How sad because this automatically violates the assumption of homogeneity of variance. However, if the statisticians are robust then everything will work out between them.
*Thanks to Sweta Sorab of GE Energy Servicees Marketing Forcasting for forwarding me the first line of this quip. I added several lines to continue the fun-poking at the statisticians.
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An elderly statistician complained to a younger statistician one day that he was having a "senior moment" when he forgot what integrating the normal probability density function produced. The younger statistician said not to worry because all he had to do was to set "junior moment" on his moment generating function and it would spit out "area under the curve." The elderly statistician stared vacantly for a few seconds then confessed that his moment generating function had no such setting and suggested that the younger statistician may have also just had a "senior moment"!
* This little exchange I wrote is dedicated to Professor Robert V. Hogg of the Statistics Department at the University of Iowa who taught me all about moment generating functions. Professor Hogg was an outstanding instructor and his upbeat attitude and interjection of fun into his lectures first gave me the notion that just maybe statistics did not have to be dry and humorless.
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I don't know why people are so negative about statistics and statisticians. I'm only a first-year student, and statistics has already taught me everything I need to know about life--always Proceed with Caution and Reject H0!
*Thanks to Priscilla Mok at the Hong Kong International School for sending me this little testimonial about the field of statistics. Don't forget, Priscilla, to mention that the statistical literature is laced with all those positive Chi-Squares and F-ratios that also perk up your day.
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Three statisticians went hunting. When they arrived at the forest three deer stepped out in a line directly across from the three statisticians. The statistician on the right fired and hit his deer, then the statistician on the left fired and hit his deer. At that point the statistician in the middle said, "Well boys we all got our deer, lets go home!"
*OK! This one may take a while to even elicit a smile. In fact, it took me over a day to realize what was funny here. Just think about basic analytic geometry and the "a ha" will hit you. Bruce Hunn sent me this clever story from the Army Research Laboratory in Ft Huachuca, AZ. Many Thanks!
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You can always TELL a statistician,
But you cant tell him much!!
*I might add that if you tell a statistician TOO MUCH he would feel cheated out of making an inference. Thanks once again to Doc Finstuen for this truism from "ALAMO" country in Texas.
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A reader of this Gallery sent me a very amusing story.
He took advantage of one of those online offers...a free credit report. He was delighted to learn that his credit rating was better than 100% of those who had received such a report...which obviously included himself. "Whoopee!!!, he exclaimed, my credit rating was better than MY OWN!!! It just doesn't get any better than that."
*Harley(I need your last name), thanks for this cute anecdote. This does hit on a point that I have been frequently asked about. Can a person's score in any distribution fall at the 100th percentile or more precisely can his score have a percentile rank of 100? If you subscribe to classical test theory, the answer is technically NO. Suppose that person A had a top score of 23 on a 25 item test with the remaining 49 other students scoring below 23. Then assuming the scores are continuous, person A's true score would be between the real limits of 22.5 and 23.5. The only way that person A's score would have a percentile rank of 100 would be if his true score was between 22.5 and 23. Since it is just as likely that his true score is between 23 and 23.5, we generally compromise and assume 1/2 of his score is between 22.5 and 23 and the other half is between 23 and 23.5 (a whacky assumption but more plausible if you had several scores of 23). Thus the percentile rank of person A would be (49 + (1/2 x 1))/50 = 49.5/50 = 99. Most modern authers subscribe to the above line of thinking but as we all know, statistics is heavily laden with many assumptions.
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SOME BEHAVIORAL TRAITS OF A STATISTICIAN TO PONDER
(1) Picks the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 , 5, and 6 in the State Lottery.
*Hey, what's wrong with these? This set of six numbers is just as likely as any other set of six numbers from 1-52 such as 35, 8, 44, 23, 32, and 10! A statistician just likes order in his life.
(2) Carries a Brannock Device (See Shoe Quiz) in his car trunk rather than a small air compressor.
*It is more important that his passengers have correct fitting shoes rather than having the correct amount of air pressure in his tires!
(3) Loves riding a roller coaster because the quick ups and downs remind him of his arm motions when drawing normal curves on the blackboard.
*Now if he could only draw a straight score-scale line on the board he would have it made!
(4) Displays fickleness when he relishes showing his class that in baseball, Pete Rose's 44 game hitting streak was slightly more improbable than Joe Dimaggio's 65 game hitting streak but yet would vote to keep Rose out of the Hall of Fame.
*What? This is unbelievable! The key is that Rose had a lifetime batting average of .300 whereas Dimaggio's was .325 and this differential does not overcome the more games that Rose played in that season.
(5) Shows an almost exclusive preference for hypothesis testing over confidence intervals in making inferences as most applied statisticians do. But then is speechless when a student remarks ,"But sir, if we reported confidence intervals then we wouldn't have to fuss with Type I and II Errors or the Power of the test!"
* How true! How true! But we must always support Neyman and Pearson and forever keep their names in front of the statistical community.
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Why do most statistics professors at Case Western Reserve University have a clean record, but a few get put in prison for life?
There is an uncommon level of VARIANTS in the area!
*Thanks go out to John Newbrough, a statistics student at Case Western Reserve, for relating this demographic oddity for the Gallery. This has to imply that Western Reserve is Number One in the respect shown for the discipline!
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THE BELL CURVE MEETS THE WELL CURVE
BELL: Fancy meeting you underneath me. I never did understand why someone perverted er,uh INVERTED me and created you. You aren't worth much!
WELL: You must have had your BELL rung! One of your allegedly famous applications is approximating a sampling distribution for certain hypothesis tests and the power curves for many of these tests are well, a WELL CURVE.
BELL: Oh WELL, I forgot that! More critically, WELL, your central tendancy is all messed up. Neither your mean or median represents you. Only your modes at the extremes characterize you. My curve is neat and tidy with all those indices identical. That is a real BELL RINGER!
WELL: WELL BELL, you are still living in the 18th and 19th centuries. You don't realize how distributions are changing. For example, the distribution of wealth is becoming WELL since the middle class is disappearing and only the extremly wealthy and the impoverished poor are increasing at the ends. Also, the approval ratings of elected officials is becoming WELL since feelings are polarized at the extremes with not much in the middle. I could go on and on.
BELL: WELL, you are threatening the limits of my practical range! Maybe, we can talk again under more NORMAL circumstances.
WELL: BELL you had your MOMENTS but we shall talk again. Meanwhile let us tell all statisticians to tie each set of our ends together and use the combined distributions as a CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENT! Good Day!
* Well folks, how many of you have even heard of the WELL CURVE? I was doing some Web surfing recently and found this interesting article by Jim Pinto printed in the San Diego Mensan, Aug. 2003. Seemingly, Mr. Pinto has coined the expression WELL CURVE for an inverted Normal Curve and touted its usefulness. Maybe this curve is becoming so prominant that it should now be included in statistics textbooks. Anyway, this conversation between the two curves is strictly my own little piece of "humorous" statistical nonsense.
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Checking some questionnaires that had just been filled in, a census clerk was amazed to note that one of them contained figures 121 and 125 in the spaces for "Age of Mother, If Living" and "Age of Father, if Living."
"Surely your parents can't be as old as this?" asked the incredulous clerk.
"Well no," was the answer, "but they would be IF LIVING!"
*Is this telling us that census data is biased on age of parents? Thanks Michele McIndoe for sending me this neat little joke.
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A statistician is a professional who dilegently collects facts and data and then carefully draws confusions about them.--- Author unknown thank goodness!
*How ungreatful! Here we statisticians work our tails off to make sense out of samples and use sophisticated techniques to make valuable inferences about populations and people tell us that we confuse them. How dare they?
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My pain and confusion covary
At levels both looming and scary
To pass this exam
I'll be needing some scam -
Oh statistics! I should have been wary.
*Thanks Deborah Apthorpe from down under at Macquarie Univrsity in Sydney, Australia for sending me this cute little limerick. If this Joke Gallery can display Knock! Knock! jokes, we certainly can make room for a few statistical limericks. Debby suggests that instructors of statistics have their students write these competitively in class as a learning device. Great Idea!
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Then there was the story of the sociological statistician who retired early from his teaching position at the university. He had grown up on the farm as a youth and still feeling quite chipper, decided to buy a large dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. After a short time the milk and cheese from his herd of cows became famous for miles around. Since his research at the university had demanded the use of many Chi-Square Goodness of Fit Tests, he thought he should commemorate all these procedures. Every year he invited the public to what became the most publicized and extravagant wine and cheese festival in Wisconsin. It was fondly called the GOODNESS OF TIT FEST!!!
*Some of you experienced statisticians out there may well of heard this little reversal of letters before but not my story behind it. Maybe you heard it back in your graduate training days and all the snickers that accompanied it. I know I did. However, I always thought the original moniker was an awkward use of words and should have been renamed(Hear that Mr. Karl Pearson). The fact remains that this test is one of the most frequently appearing procedures in the literature, particularly in testing the independence of two nominal or ordinal variables.
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The secretary of defense gave the president his daily briefing. He concluded by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."
"Oh No!" the president exclaimed. "That's Terrible!"
His staff was stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the president sat, his head in his hands.
Finally, the president looked up and asked, "Just how many is a brazillion?"
*Here is another example of the ubiquitous innumeracy that is gripping this country. Thanks to my good friend Merle (Pearl Diver) Howard, an emeritus Professor of Speech Pathology at Illinois State University, for forwarding this little story to me. I wonder if the White House could use a good speech pathologist as a consultant these days?
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A freshman college student had the misfortune of having several auto accidents while living at home with his parents. One day his statistics professor told his class that 83% of all auto accidents happen within 20 miles of your home. The very next day the student moved 22 miles from home and never had another accident during his entire college career!!!
*This young man found a neat way to beat the odds. I just wonder what would have happened had his parents decided to move in with him? Thanks go out to Jon Holmen, a student at Illinois State University, for passing along this story.
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Knock! Knock!
Who's there?
Em
Em who?
MLE! The Maximum Likelihood Estimator!
*This is the second Knock! Knock! joke that has met very stringent criteria to enter the Gallery. I promise to scrutinize with even higher standards future jokes of this genre. Many thanks to Gavin Desir for sending me this joke from the University College in London, England via one of the last transcontinental telegrams.
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A cannibal goes shopping for dinner. His wife wants to prepare brains that day. At the butcher's shop he is told that there are three prices: First, there is statistician's brain at 1 dollar per pound. Secondly, they have lawyer's brain at 2 dollars a pound. And finally, he can buy politician's brain at 4 dollars a pound.
The cannibal is bewildered at this price range and asks the butcher, "Why on earth should a pound of politician brain cost that much more than statistician brain? Do you really think that the quality is so much better?"
The butcher replies, "No, but if you count how many politicians it takes to get a pound..."
*I wonder if the cannibal should agree to a plea bargain and buy the lawyer brain? This ghoulish joke was forwarded to me by a reader of the Gallery who wished to remain anonymous because this was not his creation. Many thanks to the sender anyway.
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"The best thing about being a statistician," J.W. Tukey once told a colleague, "is that you get to play in everyone's backyard."
The colleague retorted, "But Professor Tukey, that is why a statistician is considered a Peeping-Tom by many guardians of sensitive data in the world!!!!"
*The first statement is an actual quote. The second is my own fictitious retort to further the humor. For a capsule version of the amazing life and astonishing contributions of one of the greatest American Statisticians that ever lived see Tukey.
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Knock! Knock!
Whose there? (without opening the door)
"The census taker."
"Go away - I don't want my senses taken."
"No, you don't understand, I just want to survey you."
"A statistical sample of one isn't valid -- go away."
"You aren't the only one."
"So you are bothering a whole bunch of people, go away."
"Look you are unique and I don't want to miss you in the survey."
"How do you know I'm unique when you haven't surveyed me yet?"
"Ok, I don't know you are unique, but you might be."
"You mean you think I'm an oddball."
"No, maybe more like an outlier."
"Now you are calling me an out and out lier, go away."
"No, I mean you are far from the average Joe."
"I hope so, I'm Sally."
"Look Sally, we are trying to get population data, how many people live here?"
"Gosh, how would I know, I think there about 15 thousand in Smugville."
"No, I mean in this house!"
"Oh, that's a question of a different nature."
"So, how many?"
"Sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes four , now -- go away."
"No, I need a precise number."
"Ok, how about 1.34"
"How did you come up with that?"
"I live here sometimes during the week, my sistor visits me on weekends,
and my mother visits me every second week, my two cats are sometimes here,
and my .... and that's none of your business".
"Thanks Sally have a great day."
(census taker wrote -- "NO PERSONS LIVING HERE - UNOCCUPIED.")
*This is hilarious. It reminds me of the Abbott and Costello "Who's on first?" routine. Also it has to be the longest Knock! Knock! joke ever written. Many thanks to Collin Carbno for sending this clever exchange from Saskatchewan Canada.
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A Statistics Professor had just completed an exhaustive review session for his students the day before the exam. At the end of the session, he stated emphatically, "One more thing! The exam is open-book and don't forget to bring a TABLE to the test." The students were relieved to hear this bit of good news that TABLES could be used.
Next day, the students filed into the room with textbooks and materials under their arms. The Professor greeeted them with a sour and very puzzled look on his face. He then loudly pronounced, "Well ladies and gentlemen, I am very sorry, but you will have to take your tests STANDING UP!! They just refinished the floors in all the rooms of the building!!"
*How sad that the students forgot the most important item on test day! This joke is dedicated to the late Professor Paul J. Blommers of the University of Iowa. Professor Blommers chaired my dissertation committee and taught me the principles of concise statistical writing. He also championed the notion of open-book statistics exams (assuming, of course, you have a TABLE to spread your materials out on). I later adopted this idea. I recall telling my students that the exams were always open-book, open-notes, open crib-sheets, and your choice of using any other statistics books. There was only one exclusion-- You could not hire a statistical consultant to sit next to you in the test!!
Oh, I would be remiss if I did not give credit to Alan Huang of the Australian Bureau of Statistics for giving me the idea for this joke. However, I fear it will be rated by my critics as the "Lamest of the Lame."
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How is a normal probability distribution like a lion?
They both have a MEAN MEW.
*Thanks are in order to Cynthia Gadol, an AP Statistics Teacher at Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy, for sending me this neat little pun. She claims she heard it years ago from Professor Rolf Bargmann at the University of Georgia. Cynthia, I have a reply for you: Q. How does a lion differ from a normal probablity distribution? A. A Lion can not go three standard deviations in pitch above or below its mean mew!! Oh well, this craziness makes the medicine go down a lot easier.
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It is 1941 and the Germans are bombing Moscow. Most people in Moscow flee to the underground bomb shelters at night, except for a famous Russian statistician who tells a friend that he is going to sleep in his own bed, saying that "There is only one of me, among five million other people in Moscow. What are the chances I'll get hit?"
He survives the first night, but the next evening he shows up at the shelter. His friend asks why he has changed his mind. "Well," says the statistician, "there are five million people in this city, and one elephant in the Moscow Zoo. Last night, THEY GOT THE ELEPHANT!"
*This should be a staple story for every probability course. It is almost as if the Probability Gods talk to one another after every occurence of an event. The same individual sent me this that related the story about shopping for gourmet brains and insists on remaining anonymous. A big thanks, anyway!
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What is the name of the only known Motel chain that caters to professional draftsmen?
Hotelling's T2 !
*The wonderful statisticians who pioneered the field of multivariate analysis in the 1930's and 40's need much more recognition than what they have received and Harold Hotelling was among these (And think about this--they did it without computers!!!). This statistic, of course, is the bivariate counterpart of the univariate t-test. Story has it that William S. Gosset was granted a lifetime pass to any motel in Dr. Hotelling's chain.
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Several weeks ago I received one of those infinitely forwarded emails that makes the rounds throughout the year. This one had some great graphical optical illusions along with a fascinating piece about how the human mind processes reading material. The following paragraph of prose was given in large print and the recipient was asked to read and attempt to understand the material even though the letters in each word were out of order and the words were thus atrociously garbled misspellings:
Cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy. It dn'seot mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.
Most of my friends could read this with understanding and rather quickly I might add. Then I had them read a statistical bit of literature:
Miittluvraae asilyans sattes an idtenossiy ctuoonr epilsle is the itternoiecsno of a panle pleralal to the xl-yapne and the sruacfe of a btiiarave nmarol dbttiisruein.
In general the outcome changed dramatically with my friends sputtering and spattering the words with great difficulty and most ending up throwing in the towel! Remember the same rules were followed but with a not so glorious ending! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? HAS STATISTICS RUINED A REASONABLE PREMISE?
* Don't blame statistics. The words are just not as familiar and the concepts are more difficult to understand. The statistics statement reads: Multivariate analysis states an isodensity contour ellipse is the intersection of a plane parallel to the xy-plane and the surface of a bivariate normal distribution. Guuuulp! That's right and a tough one to visualize. If you do ever take a course in multivariate analysis, I assure you an exciting adventure awaits you. First you extend the familiar univariate analysis to bivariate analysis with some new concepts and ways of looking at things. Then the real thrills are experienced that bring goose bumps to your skin. The bivariate case is generalized to the multivariate case with only the use of MATHEMATICS itself and the godsend of matrix algebra to serve as your GPS unit. No more graphs and drawings to help your visualization when you progress into four dimensions or more. This may be the only time you have ever been without diagrams or pictorial aids in your life. But I can guarantee you that mastery of this material and the realization of its all-encompassing power will give you one of the most exhilerating mental highs ever and an on-top-of-the-world feeling that is hard to exceed. I rest my case!
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TEACHER ARRESTED IN NEW YORK
NEW YORK, NY - A public school teacher was arrested today at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a box of plastic pocket protectors, and a graphing calculator.
In a morning press conference,the Attorney General said he believes the man is a member of a spinoff group, St. Atistic, of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction. He also revealed that the situation was extremely tense and touch-and-go for a short time since the plastic protectors were discovered half-melted.
"Al-Gebra and particularly St. Atistic are problems for us," the Attorney said. "They recruit mean deviants who are then well trained in the use of multiple modes to search out an absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'There are three sides to every triangle'."
When asked to comment on the arrest, the President said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes." White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President.
*Thanks to my good friends Sherry and Shailer Thomas for sending me this clever story by way of another looping email. Shailer Thomas is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and understandably has a keen eye for deviant group behavior.
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If a Statistics Course were a prerequsite for having sex, this country would not have a BIRTH CONTROL Problem!!
*This was an actual quote by a former graduate student of mine in a second statistics course called Statistics II offered by our Department. Interestingly enough this fellow was among the highest achieving students in the class. I had to email him (Dennis Wright) to recover the exact wording of this joke. Thanks Dennis for your immediate reply. I think his statement was intended to illustrate the perceived difficulty of a statistics course in any curriculum.
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Did you know Santa once took a statistics class?
He had trouble remembering which hypothesis should have the equal sign so he would keep repeating: the null hypothesis, the null hypothesis, the null hypothesis. In fact to this day you can hear him say Ho, Ho, Ho!
*Many thanks to Mark Eakin of the University of Texas at Arlington for allowing me to reprint his joke which is singularly appropriate this time of the year. By the way, Santa cell phoned me from the North Pole instructing me to announce to all statisticians that he is packing his bag of hand- carved walnut small case sigma signs to deliver to every "good" statistician on Christmas Eve.
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A team of researchers from a large eastern university in the US has
recently published a monumental finding. The team discovered what the leading cause of divorce is. It is marriage!!! You see, everyone who has been divorced has been married first.
*Well, I wonder what journal was responsible for propagating in print this causal relationship. I was told the same journal had advocated a temporary moratorium on marriage as an atempt to cut the divorce rate. Thanks to Jonathan Schinhofen for suggesting this bit of sheer tomfoolery.
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When a statistician is pounding a nail with a hammer
but misses the nail and hits his thumb, what do we call it?
Sampling Error
When a statistician is pounding a nail with a hammer but misses the nail and hits his thumb 10 CONSECUTIVE times, what do we call it?
A Biased Statistic
How do we correct for the bias?
Tell the statistician to place his thumb directly on the nail and then strike his thumb with the hammer!!!
*We have all heard the expression, "I'm all thumbs." In this situation that is literally true. I hate to admit that during a weak moment this funnyism hit me. Anyway, thanks to all the reviewers who gave me two thumbs up in my mailbox on this one!
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Upon being mugged several weeks ago by the Cauchy Distribution,
the Normal Distribution had these comments:
"I am still not back to normal yet but I do have my moments and the point of inflection in my voice has improved considerably. I just wish I had taken some ordnance along that night to fend off the attacker."
*I did not know that distributions could engage in such outrageous behavior. The Statistics Crime Scene Investigative Unit (SCSIU) has made major recommendations in distribution attacks of this nature. They have strongly urged any distribution to "Always be willing to give up a few moments to an attacker and the attacker like a panhandler will usually stroll away from the scene." This little tale was suggested by a reader whose email got accidently mugged. Please notify me if you are out there.
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I really can't see the attraction
Of trying to fit interaction.
The last time I tried
I woke up on my side
With an arm and a leg both in traction.
*Thanks go out to Debby Apthorpe again from Australia for one of her famous statistical limericks. It appears that interaction is quite similar to some of the positions in the game Twister.
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50% of marriages end in divorce. Thus if you don't file for divorce, your wife will.
*This is a cute little variation of all the 50-50 jokes. But wait a minute! This says the probability of any marriage ending in divorce is one. Sorry I don't have an attribution on this one.
neige
A musician drove his statistician friend to a symphony concert one evening in his brand new mid-sized Chevy. When they arrived at the hall, all the parking spots were taken except one in a remote, dark corner of the lot. The musician quickly maneuvered his mid-sized Chevy into the space and they jumped out and walked toward the hall. They had only taken about ten steps when the musician suddenly realized he had lost his car key. The statistician was unconcerned because he knew the key had to be within one standard deviation of the car. They both retraced their steps and began searching the shadowed ground close to the driver's door. After groping on his hands and knees for about a minute, the musician bounced to his feet and bolted several hundred yards toward a large street light near the back of the concert hall. He quickly got down on all fours and resumed his search in the brightly lit area. The statistician remained by the car dumbfounded knowing that the musician had absolutely zero probablity of finding the key under the street light.
Finally, after fifteen minutes,the statistician's keen sense of logic got the best of him. He walked across the lot to the musician and asked, "Why in the world are you looking for your key under the street light? You lost it back in the far corner of the lot by your car!"
The musician in his rumpled and stained suit slowly got to his feet and muttered angrily, "I KNOW, BUT THE LIGHT IS MUCH BETTER OVER HERE!!"
*Thanks to the late Professor Robert Rumery for telling me a variation of this story. If you are a musician, the lesson of this tale is: IF YOU GO MORE THAN THREE STANDARD DEVIATIONS FROM MIDDLE C YOU WILL NEVER FIND THE RIGHT KEY!
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An alien from a distant planet had a real problem. He had five groups of scores with their means and simply wanted to know which pairs of means differed significantly from one another. Since there were no statisticians on his planet he was told by a friend to visit planet earth where many scholars practiced this profession. He anxiously boarded his private spacecraft and made the long trek to earth.
The first statistician he visited was at a major university and warmly assured him that his problem had a simple solution. He told the alien to first perform an analysis of variance and if the F-test was significant to follow it up with the Tukey HSD test. The statistician told the alien that if any two means were "honestly" different this method would uncover them. The alien was ecstatic and rushed to a PC to have his data analyzed. The results were mixed. The good news was that his F was significant at the .05 level. But the bad news was that HSD indicated that none of the pairwise differences in means was significant at the .05 level. The poor alien was somewhat demoralized and could not understand the conflicting results. A lab worker boosted his spirits by telling him that Tukey was quite conservative and maybe he still had something if he would just consult another statistician.
With his spirit renewed he visited a second statistician at a major corporation. This statistician smiled smugly and remarked that professors at universities were entirely too conservative. He told the alien to assume a more liberal stance and use the Fisher LSD as a follow-up. He told him that many of his mean differences would now pop up significant and he could return to his planet a happy person. The alien's mental outlook took a big swing toward the upside and he quickly rushed down to the corporation's computing facility for further analysis. But joy soon turned to gloom! Fisher's LSD still reported no significant pairwise differences in means!
By this time the alien was beside himself with frustration and depression. He was ready to board his spacecraft and head home when a little gremlin whispered something in his ear, "Sir alien, there is a wise destitute old statistician of last resort who lives in a dilapidated old house on a hill. His methods are unorthodox but he is well known for wringing the last drop of meaning out of a set of data. You owe it to yourself to pay him a visit." The downtrodden alien felt he had nothing to lose and decided to give it a try.
The poor statistician welcomed the alien into his ramshackle home. The alien related his story how the F-test was significant but the follow-up procedures found NO significant differences between any two means. The statistician listened to his sad tale of woe and then winked at him with a broad smile. "Mr. alien I think I can guarantee some significant results. All you must do is forget your inhibitions, party it up by looking at other comparisons, and use the Scheffe S-test. Some good things will then happen to you."
The alien was quite skeptical but finally agreed to employ this strange test. The kind old statistician then invited him to the cellar of his home where he had stashed away a rusty old rotary calculator. The two sat down and the statistician feverishly pushed the keys. The gears whined, the numbers rolled on the many dials, and the carriage banged back and forth for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, after several hours, the statistician let out a howl! "Mr. alien I have it! I have found a significant difference."
The alien was trembling with sheer excitement and exclaimed "Please kind statistician, don't keep me waiting. Tell me which pairs of means are different."
The statistician blurted out, "ONE-THIRD THE SUM OF MEANS ONE, TWO, AND FOUR IS SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT FROM ONE-HALF THE SUM OF MEANS THREE AND FIVE!!"
There were several moments of deadly silence. Then the alien's mouth dropped and his face grew pale. Like a scared rabbit, he dashed toward his spacecraft and lifted off for home. As he put his craft in warp speed, he shook his head in disbelief. He vowed to visit a psychiatrist as soon as he got home and to NEVER, NEVER use numbers again.
*OK all you students enrolled in a statistics course at the university level, is it possible for the circumstances in this little story to occur in real life? Please drop me an email about my own crazy concocted story!
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They say that it's no coincidence that the University of California at Berkeley is the home of both UNIX and LSD. What does it say about statisticians that Sir Ronald Fisher gave LSD to them 40 years before anyone ever heard of Timothy Leary?
*Thanks to John Gear for relating this little known fact. My answer to this question is that statisticians had their "acid heads" far sooner than the Berkeley campus.
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The following is a true story. About twenty years ago when I first introduced a multivariate analysis course at our university, my good friend and colleague, the late Professor Valjean Cashen asked what the content of this course was all about. Wanting to impress the pants off my buddy from counseling psychology with some new statistical jargon, I said proudly, "this course teaches the principles of MANOVA."
Without batting an eye Dr. Cashen looked at me and retorted, "Oh, that is common stuff. That's an old Navy term....MANOVA BOARD!!!!"
*My readers should know that Professor Cashen always spoke highly of his duty in the US submarine corps. Thanks for the memories Val. I have always wondered, however, how a midshipman can be "over board" in a submerged submarine?
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What do you get when you cross a statistician with a chiropractor?
You get an adjusted R squared from a BACKward regression problem!
*Yes this is my very own. If you think this is lame send me a better joke that's not in the Gallery.
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Three statisticians approached St. Peter at the pearly gates to Heaven. St. Pete in a kind and gentle voice instructed them to give their name and state what they had contributed to mankind while on earth.
The first statistician stepped up confidently and said, "I am Karl Pearson and I developed the famous correlation coefficient at the start of the 20th century and it has been used by multitudes of researchers for almost 100 years."
St. Pete nodded and said, "Oh yes, that was a monumental contribution to statistics and the world. You may pass through."
The second statistician planted both feet firmly and said in a cocky fashion, "I am Sir Ronald Fisher and I founded the entire area of experimental design in the 1920's and multitudes of researchers have used these techniques for about 70 years."
St. Pete smiled broadly and said "That indeed was a landmark breakthrough in statistics and contributed to the betterment of mankind. You may also walk through the gates."
The third statistician hesitated but finally walked up slowly to St. Peter. He said timidly, "I am Joe Schmutz and I taught the Vice President who was a very reserved man several dance steps that he used in a well-known political TV commercial."
St. Pete with a puzzled look on his face stared at the man and said, "That is all well and good sir but it has absolutely nothing to do with statistics and I fail to see how your action has helped mankind."
The poor statistician thought for a second. He then quickly retorted, "But St. Peter.... These steps became the famous AL-GORE-RHYTHM that helped win the Presidential election in the year 2000!!....."
*I confess this is one of my originals. It is not intended to be a political joke.
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"July 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than all other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is inadequate, the country has grown so."
* A big thank you to Jack Barnette from the University of Iowa College of Medicine for this humorous quote by Mark Twain.
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A middle aged man suddenly contracted the dreaded disease kurtosis. Not only was this disease severely debilitating but he had the most virulent strain called leptokurtosis. A close friend told him his only hope was to see a statistical physician who specialized in this type of disease. The man was very fortunate to locate a specialist but he had to travel 800 miles for an appointment.
After a thorough physical exam, the statistical physician exclaimed, "Sir, you are indeed a lucky person in that the FDA has just approved a new drug called mesokurtimide for your illness. This drug will bulk you up the middle, smooth out your stubby tail, and restore your longer range of functioning. In other words, you will feel "NORMAL" again!"
*This shows how weird statistical humor can get. This is my own joke so go easy on the feedback!
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Three men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices far." So he leans over the basket and yells out, "Helllloooooo! Where are we?" (They hear the echo several times.)
Fifteen minutes pass. Then they hear this echoing voice: " Helllloooooo! You're lost!!" One of the men says, "That must have been a statistician." Puzzled, one of the other men asks, "Why do you say that?" The reply: "For three reasons. (1) he took a long time to answer, (2) he was absolutely correct, and (3) his answer was absolutely useless."
*Does this truly characterize a good statistician? This bit of humor has been floating around for sometime. Sorry I don't have an attribution for it.
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Once upon a time, a psychologist conducted a survey and gathered considerable amounts of data. However, as is the case many times, the data sat on the shelf gathering dust. But, one year, the psychologist decided to resurrect the data. Not being exactly sure of what to do though, the data was given to a few students to play with and summarize.
Well, as you might expect, one student did it one way, another student did it another way, and a third student even did it entirely different from the other two. Because of this, the psychologist suddenly became interested in a different question and .. proclaimed to the world:
"How goes this VARIANCE OF ANALYSIS?"
*Many thanks to Dennis Roberts of Penn State for his original offering.
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The following explains why it is so difficult for psychologists to collect good data:
To figure out how heavy a pig is, you find a good stout plank and balance it on the pole of a fence. Tie the pig onto one end of the plank, and then run around to the other side and put a rock on the opposite end. Keep trying different rocks until you get one that balances with the pig. That's about it, all you have to do then is guess the weight of the rock!
*Thanks to Jim Robison-Cox of Montana State University for revealing the Texas method of weighing a pig.
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Here are two variants of an old standard:
Some say that if you laid all the statisticians on the face of the earth end to end it would be a very good thing.
Others note that if you laid all the statisticians end to end, two thirds would be under water.
*A big thank you to David Hitchin for two cute twists.
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It is proven that the celebration of birthdays is healthy. Statistics show that those people who celebrate the most birthdays become the oldest.
*This one is credited to S. den Hartog by way of Joachim Verhagen's Science Jokes page.
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Three roommates slept through their midterm statistics exam on Monday morning. Since they had returned together by car from the same hometown late Sunday evening, they decided on a great little falsehood. The three met with the instructor Monday afternoon and told him that an ill-timed flat tire had delayed their arrival until noon.The instructor, while somewhat skeptical, agreed to give them a makeup exam on Tuesday.
When they arrived the instructor issued them the same makeup exam and ushered each to a different classroom. The first student sat down and noticed immediately the instructions indicated that the exam would be divided into Parts I and II weighted 10% and 90% respectively. Thinking nothing of this disparity, he proceeded to answer the questions in Part I. These he found rather easy and moved confidently to Part II on the next page. Suddenly his eyes grew large and his face paled. Part II consisted of one short and pointed question.......
"Which tire was it?"
*This is my own homegrown joke that was motivated by the dramatic increase in grandmother deaths on the day of an examination!
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A statistician is someone who is skilled at drawing a precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.
*This one has been rattling around in my brain but I seem to have trashed the email of the kind person that sent me this. Someone please step forward and claim this!
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A somewhat advanced society has figured how to package basic knowledge in pill form.
A student, needing some learning, goes to the pharmacy and asks what kind of knowledge pills are available. The pharmacist says "Here's a pill for English literature." The student takes the pill and swallows it and has new knowledge about English literature!
"What else do you have?" asks the student. "Well, I have pills for art history, biology, and world history, "replies the pharmacist. The student asks for these, and swallows them and has new knowledge about those subjects!
Then the student asks, "Do you have a pill for statistics? "The pharmacist says "Wait just a moment", and goes back into the storeroom and brings back a whopper of a pill that is about twice the size of a jawbreaker and plunks it on the counter. "I have to take that huge pill for statistics?" inquires the student.
The pharmacist understandingly nods his head and replies "Well, you know statistics always was a little hard to swallow."
*Thanks to Matt Holtz for a glimpse of how education will be dispensed in the 21st century. By the way, statistics.com has very small pills in the form of a wide array of great online statistics courses for those so inclined.
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There was this statistics professor who, when driving his car, would always accelerate hard before coming to any Intersection, whip straight through it , then slow down again once he'd got past it. One day, he took a passenger, who was understandably unnerved by his driving style, and asked him why he went so fast over intersections. The statistics professor replied, "Well, statistically speaking, you are far more likely to have an accident at an intersection, so I just make sure that I spend less time there."
*To a colleague of mine who just had his driver's license suspended, thanks for telling me this one.
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Did you know that the great majority of people have more than the average number of legs? It's obvious really; amongst the 57 million people in Britain there are probably 5,000 people who have got only one leg. Therefore the average number of legs is:
((5000 * 1) + (56,995,000 * 2)) / 57,000,000 = 1.9999123
Since most people have two legs...
*Thanks to Joachim Verhagen's Science Jokes for this play upon numbers.
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A retired statistician purchased a brass Aladdin's lamp at an antique shop one day. Being very proud of his purchase, he cradled the lamp with one arm against his chest and began his walk home. He had only walked a block when he was startled by a belch of smoke from the lamp and the appearance of a magic genie.
"Hello kind sir," said the genie. "I am here to grant you three wishes. Since you have toiled your entire life with numbers to benefit people in many different professions, the only provision is that these wishes must also benefit others. To insure that this happens, those three lawyers walking on the other side of the street will each receive DOUBLE what you receive."
Now the statistician recalled some bad experiences with lawyers but was still excited and agreed to the conditions. The genie smiled gleefully and asked the statistician for his first wish. The statistician thought only for a second and responded,"I would like a brand new red Ferrari automobile." Poof! A sparkling red Ferrrari appeared. He then looked across the street and saw six red Ferraris pop up, two for each lawyer.
The genie smiled broadly and asked the statistician for his second wish. With very little thought the satistician said "I would like a million dollars." Poof! A million dollars appeared in a gilded suitcase. He quickly glanced across the street and saw that each of the three lawyers received two gilded suitcases containing a million bucks each.
By this time, the statistician was becoming somewhat angry because he thought the lawyers were receiving more than their fair share. The genie then admonished him that he had only one last wish and should think very carefully about what he wanted. The statistician painfully puzzled over his last wish for several minutes. He finally replied,"You know all my life I have always wanted to be an organ donor so I hereby wish the donation of ONE of my kidneys to the local hospital! Poof! A kidney was donated .........
*Thanks to my son Joel for telling me this and I will admit to slightly altering the original. Many people required an explanation of this one.
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In God we trust. All others must bring data.
*This emphasizes the lofty status of statistics in our everyday lives. This one is attributed to Robert Hayden, Plymouth State College.
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A Physicist, a Biologist, and a Statistician see two people enter a house, and then after some time, they see three people leave the house.
The Physicist concludes, "My initial observation must have been incorrect." The Biologist concludes, "Clearly, the two reproduced..." The Statistician concludes, "Well, if one more person enters the house, then there will be no-one in the house!"
*A big thanks to Paul Dickman for this subtle piece of humor that many of my friends just don't understand.
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Did you hear about the statistician who had his head in an oven and his feet in a bucket of ice? When asked how he felt, he replied, "On the average I feel just fine."
*Thanks to George Litman for reminding me of the first statistics joke I had ever heard. This just might be the granddaddy of them all.
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An undergraduate psychology major was totally hung over for the final exam in abnormal psychology. He was somewhat relieved to find that the exam was a true/false test. He had taken a basic stat course and did remember his professor once performing a coin flipping experiment. Since his brain was pretty mushy he decided to flip a coin he had in his pocket to get the answers for each question. The psychology professor watched the student the entire two hours as he was flipping the coin...writing the answer...flipping the coin ...writing the answer, on and on. At the end of the two hours, everyone else had left the room except for this one student. The professor walks up to his desk and angrily interrupts the student, saying: "Listen, it is obvious that you did not study for this exam since you didn't even open the question booklet. If you are just flipping a coin for your answer, why is it taking you so long?"
The stunned student looks up at the professor and replies bitterly (as he is still flipping the coin): "Shhh! I am checking my answers!"
*This is real cute but unfortunately I don't have an attribution for it. Can anyone claim it?
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Two statisticians were traveling in an airplane from LA to New York. About an hour into the flight, the pilot announced that they had lost an engine, but don't worry, there are three left. However, instead of 5 hours it would take 7 hours to get to New York. A little later, he announced that a second engine failed, and they still had two left, but it would take 10 hours to get to New York. Somewhat later, the pilot again came on the intercom and announced that a third engine had died. Never fear, he announced, because the plane could fly on a single engine. However, it would now take 18 hours to get to New York. At this point, one statistician turned to the other and said, "Gee, I hope we don't lose that last engine, or we'll be up here forever!"
*This was found at the Dynamic StatisticsTM software site of Key Curriculum Press at Fathom
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There was a very old Peanuts cartoon in which Charlie Brown was addressing his baseball team at the end of the season. He recited numerous dismal statistics such as: Runs scored by us 12, by opponents 125. At the end of the speech he yells out: "And what are we going to do about it?" to which the team answers in unison: "Get a new statistician!"
neige
A Bayesian is one who, vaguely expecting a horse, and catching a glimpse of a donkey, strongly believes he has seen a mule.
*This got lost in the shuffle last spring. A belated thanks to Ken Lienemann.
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Why did the statistician become a statistician? He found accountancy too exciting.
*Thanks to Ian Story for this offering from Australia.
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Did you hear about:
the four statisticians who were caught in a boating shop tossing packages of canvas around? It turned out they were just fore-casting sales.
the statistician who went out on a limb to obtain a nested design?
the statistician who attempted the distribution of joints but was arrested by the vice squad?
the statistician who was looking all over for the sum of eigenvalues from a variance- covariance matrix but couldn't find a trace?
the nonparametrician who couln't get his driving license? He could't pass the sign test.
the two binomial random variables who talked very quietly because they were discrete?
the ancient roman statistician who was always called a nerd? Turns out he was just a Latin Square.
The father and son station wagon? Talk about a case of auto-correlation!
the nine-foot tall roman numeral who took over Congress and outlawed decimals? It was just a case of the strong law of large numbers.
*Thanks to Mark Eakin by way of Karen Scheltema for this contribution.
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Statisticians are like the drunk leaning against the lamp pole - they are there for support not illumination.
*This is one of my favorites. Thanks to Jim Hume again by way of Karen Scheltema.
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A statistician's wife had twins. He was delighted. He rang the minister who was also delighted. "Bring them to church on Sunday and we'll baptize them," said the minister. "No," replied the statistician. "Baptize one. We'll keep the other as a control."
*Sorry I lost the attribution on this one. Does anyone want to claim credit?
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Then there's the one that if you laid every statistician on the face of the earth end to end you would't reach a conclusion.....Probably.
*Again I could not find the attribution on this witty short one.
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A guy was walking along and saw a frog sitting on the side of the road. The frog said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." The guy picked up the frog, looked it over, smiled, put it into his pocket and continued on his way.
A few minutes later the frog said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess and stay with you for a week!" The guy took the frog out of his pocket, smiled, and put it back into his pocket.
A few minutes later the frog said "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess, stay with you for a week and do ANYTHING you want!!" The guy took the frog out of his pocket again, smiled at it, and put it back into his pocket.
Finally, the frog said, "I said that if you would just kiss me, I would turn into a beautiful princess and do ANYTHING you want for a whole week! Why won't you kiss me?" The guy said, "Look, I'm a statistician and I don't have time for girl friends, but a talking frog is kind of neat."
* A big thanks to Karen Scheltema, I think, for this romantic joke.
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What does a statistician call it when the heads of 10 rats are cut off and 1 survives?
Nonsignificant.
*Thanks to Chad Hartry a graduate student in my Stat II class.
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These two friends decide to go rabbit hunting with bow and arrows. They convince their friend, the statistician, to come along since he doesn't get out very much. The three wait patiently out in the woods for a rabbit to pass by. Suddenly a rabbit bolts across a clearing some distance away and races toward a dense patch of trees. The first hunter whips out his bow, strings an arrow, and lets fly. "Darn," he cries, "the arrow was a foot short." Just then the rabbit bolts across the clearing from the other side of the woods. The second hunter whips out his bow, strings an arrow, and lets fly. "Darn" complains the second hunter," the arrow went a a foot long." The rabbit once more emerges from the woods and races across the clearing. the statistician starts to raise his bow and then lowers it with a contemplative expression. He takes out the stub of a pencil, finds a crumpled envelope in a pants pocket, and quickly executes some calculations on the back of the envelope. Then he looks up, smiling, as the rabbit disappears for the final time and waves the envelope in the direction of the other two hunters. "Look at this -- if you take the mean distance that the arrows went, we got the rabbit!"
*A big thank you to Frederick M. Siem.
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A man who travels a lot was concerned about the possibility of a bomb on board his plane. He determined the probability of this, found it to be low but not low enough for him. So now he always travels with a bomb in his suitcase. He reasons that the probability of two bombs being on board would be infinitesimal.
*Contributed by Eugene A. Berg -Thanks! Taken from Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos.
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"79.48% of all statistics are made up on the spot." - John A. Paulos
*Thanks to Bill Weaver for this quickie!
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PREAMBLE:It may help those who are unaware of what "epidemiologists" do to know that they are researchers who collect data about people and diseases and try to find patterns. This involves lots of data collection and statistical analysis usually. A simple (and early) example of what an epidemiologist does would be the first study to show that those who smoked were more likely to develope lung cancer etc. NOW FOR THE JOKE.....
There is a group of five statisticians on a train. At the next stop, five epidemiologists get on. They all seem to know each other and start chatting. It transpires that all the epidemiologists have bought a ticket, but the statisticians have only bought one between the five of them. "Why did you do that?" asks one of the epidemiologists. "Surely you're going to get caught and thrown off the train?" "Just wait and see!", smiles one of the statisticians.
As the ticket inspector is approaching to check everyone's tickets, the statisticians all go off to the nearest toilet - the inspector passes the epidemiologists and inspects all their tickets then moves on and notices that the toilet is locked. "Tickets please!", shouts the inspector. One of the statisticians pushes their ticket under the toilet door, which the inspector checks and returns under the door. Once the inspector has gone, all the statisticians return to their seats to the awe and amazement of the epidemiologists. "That's incredibly clever!" says one of the epidemiologists.
A few weeks later they all find themselves on the same train again. They sit together and start chatting once more. "We've done what you suggested", says one of the epidemiologists. "And just bought one ticket between the five of us!" "Oh really", says one of the statisticians. "we haven't bought ANY tickets this time!" The epidemiologists look at each other in amazement. "OK, one ticket between you is fine but not buying any at all is ludicrous!"
As the ticket inspector approaches the epidemiologists hurry off to the toilet. Once they're inside, the statisticians follow them. "Tickets please!" shouts one of the statisticians. The ticket appears under the door and they take it away and all bundle into a different toilet. The inspector gets to the toilet with the epidemiologists in it. "Tickets please!" he shouts. No reply. "Tickets please!" The epidemiologists admit defeat and come out of the toilet only to be thrown off the train at the next station.
THE MORAL OF THIS STORY: Epidemiologists should not attempt to use statistical methods without fully understanding the theory behind them!
*Kudos to Dave Ewart from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Oxford UK for this clever story.
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Two unbiased estimators were sitting in a bar. The first says, "So how do you like married life?" The other replies, "It's pretty good if you don't mind giving up that one degreee of freedom!"
*A big thank you to Bert Bishop for submitting this.
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Statistics are like a bikini; What is revealed is interesting; What is concealed is crucial.
Thanks go out to R. Taylor for this little tidbit.
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PROOF THAT ALL ODD NUMBERS ARE PRIME:
Mathmatician -- 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, the rest follows by induction.
Statistician -- 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is expermental error so throw it out, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, the rest follows by induction.
Computer Scientist -- 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, ....
*Thanks Beth Clarkson from Boeing. I still think it is a good joke!
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There were a physicist, a circus strong man, and a statistician marooned on a desert island. A box of canned food washes ashore, and the question is how to open the cans. The physicist suggests dropping them from the trees so that they break open. The strong man says that's too messy. Instead, he will rip the cans open with his bare hands. The statistician says that's still too messy, but he knows how to open the cans without making a mess. "First," he says "assume we have a can opener."
*Electric or manual? Thanks Robert Frick for your contribution.
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DESIGN CREED
I believe in Analysis of Variance, a gift of the Almighty bestowed upon grateful mankind by Divine Providence through the Inspiration of the venerable Sir R. A. Fisher, Knight of the Realm, and his Disciples.
I believe in the F-Ratio wherein the uppermost Mean Square Between overcomes the lowly Mean Square Within to yield Significant Blessings upon Faithful Researchers.
I shall continue to maximize Experimental Variance and minimize Error Variance until the last of my Degrees of Freedom be spent and Divine Control shall see fit to lift my soul from this vale of Errors and Confirm my Hypothesis in that Blessed Realm where all Variance be Systematic and Error Variance be nought.
*Thanks to Hugh Foley for this contribution.
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Definition of a Statistician: A Mathematician broken down by age and sex.
*Another Hugh Foley jewel.
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THE TOP TEN REASONS TO BECOME A STATISTICIAN
Deviation is considered normal.
We feel complete and sufficient.
We are "mean" lovers.
Statisticians do it discretely and continuously.
We are right 95% of the time.
We can legally comment on someone's posterior distribution.
We may not be normal but we are transformable.
We never have to say we are certain.
We are honestly significantly different.
No one wants our jobs.
*This one was sent anonomously through my Guestbook.
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One day there was a fire in a wastebasket in the Dean's office and in rushed a physicist, a chemist, and a statistician. The physicist immediately starts to work on how much energy would have to be removed from the fire to stop the combustion. The chemist works on which reagent would have to be added to the fire to prevent oxidation. While they are doing this, the statistician is setting fires to all the other wastebaskets in the office. "What are you doing?" they demanded. "Well to solve the problem, obviously you need a large sample size" the statistician replies.
*This is one of my favorites. Thanks again to Hugh Foley.
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REMEMBER! Data is always plural!
*Short but clever. A big thank you to John Roden. However, Steve Collins, a geologist, wrote me recently and proclaimed, "The jury are still out on that."
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A statistician and a clinical professor are in a coffee shop. The latter looks up, splutters coffee, half chokes and says "That's my intern over there and she's gone and cut all her hair off". The statistician looks up and nods: "on this side at any rate".
*I am still trying to convince myself that this is funny. Thanks anyway to Ronan Conroy in Dublin, Ireland for sharing this one.
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And there was the statistician who was asked how her husband was and replied "Compared with whom?"
*Almost forgot this quickee from the same Ronan Conroy. Thanks!
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A hungry man went into a restaurant and noticed that the daily special was rabbit burgers, a real delicacy, for only 49 cents a burger. He was astounded at his good fortune to find such a bargain. When he inquired of the cook, the cook told him that in order to keep prices down he had to add some filler: in fact, only part of the burger was rabbit meat. The rest was horse meat.
"How much of each kind of meat is in a burger?" asked the customer.
The cook replied, "There is an equal amount of horse and rabbit in the burger: One horse, one rabbit."
*Thanks one more time Hugh Foley for this quasi-statistical joke.
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Did you know that there are _three_ kinds of statisticians--those that can count and those that can't.
*A big thank you to a fellow Hawkeye, John Creyer, for a great chuckle.
ypchen
有空的话 翻译出来吧
neige
能力有限,有的翻译出来也就不搞笑了,
我刚发现我是侠客了!