GARY C. RAMSEYER'S FIRST INTERNET GALLERY OF STATISTICS JOKES BY TOPIC

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?

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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."

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!

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.

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.