Category: math

Hello, this is probably 438-9012, yes, the house of the famous statistician. I’m probably not at home, or not wanting to answer the phone, most probably the latter, according to my latest calculations. Supposing that the universe doesn’t end in the next 30 seconds, the odds of which I’m still trying to calculate, you can leave your name, phone number, and message, and I’ll probably phone you back. So far the probability of that is about 0.645. Have a nice day.

The Lipton Company is big on statistics–especially t-tests.

Old statisticians never die, they just undergo a transformation.

Statistics are like a bikini; What is revealed is interesting; What is concealed is crucial.

There were a physicist, a circus strong man, and a statistician marooned on a desert island. A box of canned food washes ashore, and the question is how to open the cans. The physicist suggests dropping them from the trees so that they break open. The strong man says that’s too messy. Instead, he will rip the cans open with his bare hands. The statistician says that’s still too messy, but he knows how to open the cans without making a mess. “First,” he says “assume we have a can opener.”

1. They speak only the Greek language.2. They usually have long threatening names such as Bonferonni, Tchebycheff, Schatzoff, Hotelling, and Godambe. Where are the statisticians with names such as Smith, Brown, or Johnson?3. They are fond of all snakes and typically own as a pet a large South American snake called an ANOCOVA.4. For perverse reasons, rather than view a matrix right side up they prefer to invert it.5. Rather than moonlighting by holding Amway parties they earn a few extra bucks by holding pocket-protector parties.6. They are frequently seen in their back yards on clear nights gazing through powerful amateur telescopes looking for distant star constellations called ANOVA’s.7. They are 99% confident that sleep can not be induced in an introductory statistics class by lecturing on z-scores.8. Their idea of a scenic and exotic trip is traveling three standard deviations above the mean in a normal distribution.9. They manifest many psychological disorders because as young statisticians many of their statistical hypotheses were rejected.10. They express a deap-seated fear that society will someday construct tests that will enable everyone to make the same score. Without variation or individual differences the field of statistics has no real function and a statistician becomes a penniless ward of the state.

A shoeseller meets a mathematician and complains that he does not know what size shoes to buy. “No problem,” says the mathematician, “there is a simple equation for that,” and he shows him the Gaussian normal distribution. The shoeseller stares some time at het equation and asks, “What is that symbol?” “That is the Greek letter pi.” “What is pi?” “That is the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle.” Upon this the shoeseller cries out: “What does a circle have to do with shoes?!”

A math student is pestered by a classmate who wants to copy his homework assignment. The student hesitates, not only because he thinks it’s wrong, but also because he doesn’t want to be sanctioned for aiding and abetting.
His classmate calms him down: “Nobody will be able to trace my homework to you: I’ll be changing the names of all the constants and variables: a to b, x to y, and so on.”
Not quite convinced, but eager to be left alone, the student hands his completed assignment to the classmate for copying.
After the deadline, the student asks: “Did you really change the names of all the variables?”
“Sure!” the classmate replies. “When you called a function f, I called it g; when you called a variable x, I renamed it to y; and when you were writing about the log of x+1, I called it the timber of x+1…”

Theorem: n=n+1Proof:(n+1)^2 = n^2 + 2*n + 1Bring 2n+1 to the left:(n+1)^2 – (2n+1) = n^2Substract n(2n+1) from both sides and factoring, we have:(n+1)^2 – (n+1)(2n+1) = n^2 – n(2n+1)Adding 1/4(2n+1)^2 to both sides yields:(n+1)^2 – (n+1)(2n+1) + 1/4(2n+1)^2 = n^2 – n(2n+1) + 1/4(2n+1)^2This may be written:[ (n+1) – 1/2(2n+1) ]^2 = [ n – 1/2(2n+1) ]^2Taking the square roots of both sides:(n+1) – 1/2(2n+1) = n – 1/2(2n+1)Add 1/2(2n+1) to both sides:n+1 = n

Theorem: All positive integers are equal.Proof: Sufficient to show that for any two positive integers, A and B, A = B.Further, it is sufficient to show that for all N > 0, if A and B (positive integers) satisfy (MAX(A, B) = N) then A = B.Proceed by induction.If N = 1, then A and B, being positive integers, must both be 1. So A = B.Assume that the theorem is true for some value k. Take A and B with MAX(A, B) = k+1. Then MAX((A-1), (B-1)) = k. And hence (A-1) = (B-1). Consequently, A = B.

It is often cited that there are half as many divorces as marriages in the US, so one concludes that average marriages have a 50% chance of ending by divorce. While I was a graduate student, among my peers there were twice as many divorces as marriages, leading us to conclude that average marriages would end twice…

80% of all statistics quoted to prove a point are made up on the spot.