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

Today is all day and statistics are being created by the gazillions all over the world! Some are cursed! Some are caressed! Others just sit there unnoticed! But they all are ours and we should have fun with them and feel blessed!

NOTE: Pause about thirty seconds and let the Eskimo and Penguin thaw you out as the Stat Monster mellows out! To view and hear the animation in this window you must have Macromedia's Shockwave. If you don't have this feature move right ahead and scroll through the Gallery. NEW JOKES ARE ADDED AT THE END OF THE GALLERY.

ENJOY THE GREATEST COLLECTION OF STATISTICS JOKES ON THE INTERNET

IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ

ust as many fine art galleries in the world become cramped for space and are forced to build on additions for certain exhibits, this Joke Gallery has also grown crowded and very unwieldly and needs expansion into new rooms. I have decided to use digital bricks and mortar to create brand new commemorative halls for the Gallery, named of course, after famous statisticians. The first of these halls will honor the most famous statistician of them all, Sir Ronald A. Fisher and will permanently house Jokes 1-30 of the Original Gallery with the jokes retaining exactly their same numbers and chronological order as the original entries. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present to you FISHER HALL. The second hall will salute the venerable Karl Pearson and will permanently house Jokes 31-60 of the Original Gallery with the jokes again retaining the same numbers and ordering of the original entries. I am delighted to unveil to you PEARSON HALL. Now in October of 2007 it is time to add another wing. This third hall will celebrate the brilliant John W. Tukey and will permanently house Jokes 61-90 of the Original Gallery with numbers and ordering preserved once again. It is a pleasure to present to you TUKEY HALL. Thus this Main Gallery will begin with Joke 91 and run through the currently posted joke. NEW visitors to the Gallery may therefore want to view Fisher Hall, Pearson Hall, and Tukey Hall first and then return to the Main Gallery, whereas REGULAR visitors will probably want to continue on here in the Main Gallery. Hopefully, this change will make the Main Gallery easier to traverse. HAVE FUN WITH THIS SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT FORM OF HUMOR!

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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!!

  8. 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!!

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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.

  15. 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?

  16. 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 tendancy 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!

  17. 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!

  18. 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.

  19. 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 counteract 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?

  20. 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.

  21. 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?

  22. 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.

  23. 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.

  24. 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!!!

  25. 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.

  26. 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.

  27. 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.

  28. 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?

  29. 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!

  30. 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.

  31. 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!

  32. 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!!!

  33. 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.

  34. "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 gazillions of statistics are created every day. Many thanks to Michele McIndoe for sending me this quote.

  35. 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.

  36. 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!!

  37. 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.

  38. 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.

  39. 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.

  40. 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.

  41. 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.

  42. 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.

  43. 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.

  44. 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??

  45. 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.

  46. 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!

  47. 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.

  48. 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.

  49. 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.

  50. 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.

  51. 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.

  52. 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!

  53. 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.

  54. 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.

  55. 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.

  56. 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!

  57. 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.

  58. 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.

  59. 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?

  60. 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!

  61. 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.

  62. 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?

  63. 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.

  64. 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.

  65. 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.

  66. "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.

  67. 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.

  68. 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."

  69. 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.

  70. 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!

  71. 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.

  72. 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!

  73. 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.

  74. 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.

  75. 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.

  76. 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.

  77. 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!

  78. 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.

  79. 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.

  80. 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.
  81. It is believed by many humorists that statistical jokes are usually a flop in large nightclubs. Thus, if you examined graphically the frequency disribution of the number of statistics jokes told by every stand up comedian in the USA, what would be the shape of the frequency polygon?

    Shapeless---It would be a degenerate point distribution many units on the frequency scale above 0 on the score scale!

    *Oh! I am in big trouble now--lumping all these comedians as degenerate. The fact remains that my statement is probably very close to being true. All we need,though,is a counter example to prove me wrong. So please send me a stat joke told by a stand up comedian!! It is obvious how these people feel toward statistics humor--they know they could not make a living on the topic. Or is it possible that statistical humor is such a new phenomenan that it hasn't been incorporated into their routines yet?

  82. On a far away planet in the universe life had just been created. To everyones surprise three statisticians suddenly appeared out of the vapors and became the first living creatures on the planet. The three then sat there hunched together for what seemed like hours in stunned disbelief. Finally, the first statistician spoke up and said, "Well we all know that variation in creatures must be addressed and who better knows variability than a statistician." The second statistician gained some confidence now and said, "Yes and this planet will need to be populated and who better knows populations than a statistician." The third statistician still sat there quietly and rather glum. Suddenly he popped up like a jumping jack and proclaimed, "Yes brothers but the N=3 sample size is WAY TOO SMALL TO CONCLUDE THAT WE REALLY DO EXIST."

    *Well leave it to a statistician to throw cold water on a completed project. Everyone out there should know that I take full responsibility for bringing this bit of humor to life.

  83. HOW DIFFERENT PROFESSONALS VIEW ONE-HALF A GLASS OF WATER

    A Professional Runner views the glass as half empty since the water is from the tap and not from a natural spring.

    An Attorney views the glass as half empty since he believes his compensation is never enough.

    A Mathematician can just not decide since the glass can never be EXACTLY half full or half empty.

    An Accountant views the glass as half full but with tiny red asterisk chips floating on the surface.

    A Statistician views the glass as half full but with bubbly foam all the way up to the brim.

    *So just what is the point of stating these philosophical differences? It proves beyond a shadow of doubt that Statisticians are the most OPTIMISTIC professionals in the world because they view one-half a glass of water as essentially a FULL glass when one accounts for the ingenious inferences and extrapolations that produce this top layer of froth!! Go ahead and douse me with a BUCKET of water if you think this is lame.

  84. FOR THOSE WHO KNOW EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT STATISTICS

    Question: Is the Normal Curve ever a Skewed Distribution?

    Answer: Always!! The Lower Half of the Normal Curve is Negatively Skewed and the Upper Half is Positively Skewed!!

    *This is an unfair trick question. A Gestalt psychologist would urge you look at the normal curve as a single entity and not as two curves treated separately. But if you want to have some fun with your statistics professor ask him this question and see how he responds. Then after you give him the answer tell him he must begin thinking outside of the box. He may even give you extra credit!! I may be placed in a box and shipped away after this one.

  85. SOME BEHAVIORAL TRAITS OF A STATISTICIAN TO PONDER-PART II

    (1) Does not like to to be first or last to arrive at a party for fear of being an outlier.
    *It is the old principle of recency vs primacy for a psychologist but the statistician doesn't subscribe to either option. Arrival somewhere in the middle of the pack makes the statistician anonymous.

    (2) Is obsesssed with how many miles per hour a human hair grows!
    *Many people still believe that hair just doesn't grow in miles per hour. But a mile is a length measure just as much as a millimeter is. It is simply that most people do not relate to very large or very small numbers. The actual calculation states that human hair grows at a rate of 10 -8 or .00000001 miles per hour. What should the barbers do about this rate?

    (3) Tends to follow other people when walking in a group because of a strong leaning toward a posteriori tests after rejecting the overall H0.
    *Rarely do you see a priori tests in the literature particularly in the behavioral sciences. Could it be that statisticians do not want to perform ahead of time?

    (4) Becomes despondant when lecturing on the normal curve because he knows down deep in his lifetime he will never encounter an EXACTLY normal set of real-life discrete scores.
    *The normal curve is a very specific mathematical function that involves a continuous variable. Some real-life distributions can only hope to APPROXIMATE this model. How sad!!

    (5) As a behavioral-science statistician, harbors deeply rooted jealousy of a biometrician because the latter is blessed with ratio or interval scale data while the former muddles around with ordinal and nominal data.
    *This is a fact of life but many in the behavioral sciences would cite all the robustness studies of parametric tests and say, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!!"

  86. What's the difference between a dead possum and a dead statistician lying in the road?

    Answer: There are skid marks in front of the possum.

    *Thanks Jim White for this tale of horror. Now for the rest of the story. Santa Claus came along in his sleigh on this same road and immediately stopped at the scene. He thought the possum was playing possum so did nothing. For the statistician he reached in his bag and pulled out a bivariate normal suface with a blinking star on the dome and drapped it over the fallen statistician...a considerate gesture on Santas part to commemorate a respected profession.

  87. My scatterplot's not monotonic
    I'm sad and a trifle ironic.
    The dreadful kurtosis
    Is causing psychosis;
    Please bring me a stong gin and tonic.

    *Another limmerick from the collection of Debby Apthorpe in Australia. Thanks Debby for starting the New Year of 2008 off with a free round of drinks.

  88. It is a well established fact that Statin Drugs ($27.8 billion sales worldwide in 2006) lower the BAD cholesterol level by 20-50% in most individuals upon continuous treatment. In fact, in a recent TV ad for a certain Statin Drug endorsed by Dr. Robert Jarvik (the artificial heart man), it was stated that this drug "reduces the risk of heart attack by 36% ... in patients with multiple risk factors for heart disease but no heart disease."

    "Zowie, exclaimed a friend watching the TV ad , this is comparable to penicillin. Since they called these drugs Statins because they are 'Statistics Insured', why not add this to our drinking water supply and let everybody from babies on up benefit??"

    *Now before you petition your city council or go out and buy stock in this Drug Company, lets take a very careful look at this 36% figure which the Company itself tagged with an asterisk in the original report. Here is another prime example of innumeracy and number enhancement at its best. In smaller print the Company explained that this means in a large clinical study that lasted 3 and 1/3 years, for every 100 subjects treated with the drug, 2 people had heart attacks, as compared with 3 heart attacks in a group of 100 subjects that rececived a placebo. In other words, for every 100 subjects who took the drug, 1 less subject was spared a heart attack(i.e. 1/3=33% ≈36%). But this is a spurious percentage so we need to put this in terms of a relatively unknown but useful statistic called the NNT. I want all my readers to etch this in their mind. The NNT is the number needed to treat for one person over the expected number to benefit!. In our case the NNT is 100 ... that should have a very sobering effect on the exhuberant 36% reported earlier! Now to show you some other examples of this NNT: (a) NNT = 2 to cure a stomach ulcer with antibiotic cocktail in one year of treatment (this is a great NNT); (b) NNT = 16-23 to prevent one heart attack with a Statin in people that have had a heart attack or other signs of heart disease (most likely group to beneft from a Statin); (c) NNT = 500+ to prevent death or serious medical condition with a Statin among patients without heart disease that have a single risk factor like high blood pressure (Probably should not be on Statin at all); (d) NNT = 1000+ for Avandia, a drug for controlling blood sugar to prevent heart disease or heart attack (Even companies admit that this NNT is way too high for any benefits). Of course, along with the NNT, one must also consider the side effects of the drug in making any decision about long term usage. In the case of the Statin we mentioned before, it is very interesting that the Company essentially uses the NNT to downplay these side effects like muscle aches and memory problems. It states that only 1 in a 100 will experience side effects of some sort. WONDER WHY THE COMPANY CAN'T EMPHASIZE THE NNT FOR BOTH ISSUES? Much of this discussion is based on an article in the January 28, 2008 issue of BusinessWeek magazine. I urge all students of statistics and actually everyone to read this article online Jan 28, 2008 BusinessWeek This is one of the most illuminating articles on Drug Research that I have read and covers other key issues of drug effectiveness. By the way, the name "Statins" did not come from "Statistics Insured"... this was just part of the humor.

  89. What happens if you find the inverse of a variance-covariance matrix?

    You get an upside down statistician balancing on his head and looking up and admiring his black patent leather wing-tipped shoes. Since he was now nonsingular his friends were anxious to mingle with him and free him from his reputation as an introvert.

    *At last we got a statistician to look up at his shoes instead of down. Now to his friends the shoes were at eye level and gave off a brilliant glossy sheen. What an impressive scene that was the epitomy of class! The friends finally understood why shoes are the best measure of a person's character.

  90. A wise woman once said if all the statisticians in the world would claim all the DEGREES OF FREEDOM
    then the CEO's of all the corporations would have none. The Chiefs would be forced to go on a merit system tied to valid earnings and upon severence for poor performance would receive a black life preserver instead of a golden parachute.

    *Moreover, if the statisticians do take an infinity of degrees of freedom, many tables in textbooks would be one-row and lots of pages would be saved. it sounds like a win-win situation!

  91. What are stadium statistics?

    They are ball park estimates that are foul and land in the stands or on the roof!

    *Thanks Ken Finstuen for the idea for this little quip. Would you say these estimates have run afoul of the ball park and do not even fall within the 99% confidence limits for the parameter?

  92. Student A: What is the name of the theorem in statistics that states the sum of squares total is equal to the sum of squares between groups plus the sum of squares within groups ( i.e., h2=a2+b2 )?

    Student B: Oh that is easy. That is called the Pythagorean Theorem.

    Student A: I am sorry but that is wrong. You must have the right triangle for the Pythagorean theorem to hold and we did not assume that here.

    Student B: OK so I had the wrong triangle. if you assume the right triangle then this statement becomes the Pythagorean Theorem.

    Student A: You are now correct and it demonstrates how closely interwined the relationship is between geometry and statistics!

    *Holy Cow! What kind of statistics course are these students taking? Poor Pythagorus. He knew all about triangles and squares but statistics and variances never entered his life. The above statement is called the Basic Theorem of Analysis of Variance but the Pythagorean Theorem has no connection with it. In words, it simply states that if you take any set of scores, divide them up into a number of groups(not necessarily equal n's) and compute the three sums of squares, then ssT = ssB + ssW. This assumes nothing about triangles or where the scores came from. Elegant huh?

  93. An F-Curve was complaining to a Standard Normal z-Curve one day at the shopping mall.   

    The F-curve said, "I am really envious of you. Here I am with a big bulge on one end and a drain pipe on the other end and you have a perfect symmetrical figure."

    The z-Curve replied, "Yes Mr. F but you are a far more prestigious curve in that you are the star in major applications like ANOVA and ANCOVA."

    "Well Mr. z another thing that gripes my soul is that you never need any degrees of freedom and I always have to lug around two distinct df-values on my back!"

    "Mr. F", the z-Curve responded, "that is very misleading. You know very well that a z-Curve is nothing more than a mature t-Curve with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. Now that is a real load to carry. Take some away from me and I still have an infinity left!"

    The F-Curve paused shortly with his mouth wide open, then smiled broadly, and said in a conciliatory voice, "Mr. z, Let's go down to the ice cream shop and I will treat you to an Orange FFreeZZ! I guess statisticians really could not get by without either one of our curves."

    *What a nice ending to a story that had such a contentious beginning. Yes, statistics as a discipline could not exist without both the F- and the z-Curves.

  94. A boy asked his statistician father, "Why is my body not well proportioned   
    just like my brother's?"

    His father's response, "Because, when your mother had your pregnancy, its distribution was skewed!!"

    *Does Medical Science know about this? Does this mean if your pregnancy is normally distributed you will have a perfectly proportioned baby? Thanks to Okunola Olajide Ezekiel for sending this. It has been sitting in my files for 9 months.

  95. A statistician was reliving a weird and vivid dream for an accountant friend one day.   

    He explained, "In this strange dream, 20 or 30 accountants were sitting stark naked together in a large room at separate computers. But the erie and contradictive part of this scene was that the accountants were all on the same auction web site on their screens, each attempting to sell a spanking new package of a single pair of "Jockey Shorts" that each was waving in his hand."

    The statistician in a puzzled tone continued, "I just could not understand why the accountants just didn't slip on their pair of shorts instead of selling them on the internet. This is the most vexing part of this dream!"

    The accountant, with a sly little grin, immediately piped up, "Oh that has a simple interpretation. This is a perfect example of NAKED SHORT SELLING!"

    *To understand my little joke you must at least dabble in the stock market. I have nothing but disgust and distrust toward the entire market and financial system in the United States after the total collapse of investments during the Spring and Summer of 2008. The permitting of "Short Selling" has contributed greatly to the debacle we are still witnessing at this writing. I ASK YOU, WHERE ELSE ARE YOU ALLOWED TO SELL THINGS YOU DON'T OWN? Enough said!

  96. Each of two squaws had 2 sons sleeping inside tepees about 20 yards apart.   
    A third squaw had 3 sons playing outside between the two tepees. A statistics student remarked that this happy scenerio demonstrates very nicely The Basic Theorem of ANOVA: The TOTAL sons of squaws is equal to the sons of squaws WITHIN plus the sons of squaws BETWEEN. That is, 7 = 4 + 3!!!!

    *Although this play upon words is internally accurate, it is NOT an example of The Basic Theorem of ANOVA. The correct Theorem is one of the most pervasive themes in all of statistics and is the cornerstone of Experimental Design. ANOVA SUMMARY TABLES that you see in many published studies display the application of this Theorem and accompanying tests of significance for groups of data sets.

  97. One legacy of the Iraq War will be the unstated   
    but implied "so-called" Rumsfeld Test. This was suggested serendipitously from a Department of Defense news briefing on Feb. 12, 2002. The Secretary stated, "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me because as we know, there are known knowns; these are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."(This sounds like jibberish but Rummey is on to something here)

    Now Mr. Secretary, to validate your intelligence work, we suggest that you look at a fourth category of perceiving something unknown that is really known (Yes we said that), and this gives us the basis for a neat 2x2 chi-square test. This would be the famed nonparametric test of independence whose table of observed (O) and expected (E) counts of Intelligence Items appears for each cell in the above diagram.

    Now theoretically, if our intelligence system is operating with high efficiency, for any large set of intelligence items, the perceived observed proportion of known knowns should significantly exceed the perceived observed proportion of unknown knowns and correspondingly the perceived observed proportion of unknown unknowns should significantly exceed the perceived observed proportion of known unknowns. This is the desired direction of the dependence (Look at main diagonal of table). Remember under the assumption of independence of perceived and true items, the expected E for any cell is the row sum of O's that cell is in times the column sum of O's that cell is in divided by the overall sum of all the O's. This is repeated to get the expected E for each cell. We then substitute into the formula χ2 = Σ[(O - E)2/E] to get the test statistic Frequency Chi-Square with df = 1. Finally, this value from the data table is referred to either the 95th or 99th percentile from the Table of the Chi-Square Distribution. For Rummey's sake we hope and pray that this obtained value is larger than the critical percentile. If it is..., WHOPEE!! RUMSFELD'S INTELLIGENCE TEAM HAS BEEN VALIDATED!! But wait just one moment. We have ONE thing to check yet. Bad Dependence can also occur! If the perceived observed proportion of unknown knowns should significantly exceed the perceived observed proportion of known knowns and correspondingly the perceived observed proportion of known unknowns should significantly exceed the perceived observed proportions of unknown unknowns (Look at secondary diagonal of table), significant misclassification of the true nature of the items has occurred. THIS WOULD MEAN UTTER FAILURE OF THE INTELLIGENCE TEAM!! SO THE RUMSFELD TEST IS FRAUGHT WITH DANGER FOR INEXPERIENCED STATISTICIANS. WE MUST ONLY APPLAUD RUMSFELD'S SUCCESS WHEN KNOWN KNOWNS AND UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS PILE UP SIGNIFICANTLY IN THE TABLE. THIS IS INTUITIVELY OBVIOUS BUT MUST ALWAYS BE VERIFIED AFTER A SIGNIFICANT TEST.

    *Thanks to John A. Hansen of Indiana University for suggesting the new Rumsfeld Test. Quite frankly I originally decided it was too esoteric to mess with as are many of Rummeys long and dry explanations. Finally , with some trepidation, I decided to finish what Rumsfeld had started at the news conference and write it in a fashion that would mimmick his style of taking something simple and making it convolutedly complex. Did I succeed? It was sure loads of fun and I even, quite honestly, had trouble keeping my mind focused enough to proof read the material. But in all seriousness...NO, and I repeat NO statistical concepts should ever be explained in the gobble-de-gook word obfuscation that this writing produced. We certainly can't blame students for rebelling against instructors who intentionally or unintentionally spew out garbage such as this in the classroom? Knowing and understanding the material thoroughly and being able to clearly and concisely explain it to someone else are two entirely separate but critical components of the teaching enterprise.

We have recently added an index feature to the Joke Gallery. You may now click any STATISTICAL TOPIC from the list given below. The NUMBERED JOKES will then be displayed from the ENTIRE GALLERY that pertain to that TOPIC. Each Joke appears under only one Topic and the Jokes in the 19 sets of Topics exhaust the entire collection of Jokes in the Gallery. That is, the sets of Statistical Topics are mutually exclusive(I just had to use that "Club Expression" to spice things up a little). Many Jokes pertain to several Statistical Topics but an attempt was made to identify what was thought to be the most relevant topic. So if you prefer to view the Jokes that pertain only to the Statistical Topics that interest you, this is something that should excite you!

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