J.W. TUKEY HALL
J.W. TUKEY HALL
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.
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?"
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
"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?"
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.
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!!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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??
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?
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!!!
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!
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.
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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