Category: math

There is no truth to the allegation that statisticians are mean. They are just your standard normal deviates.

An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are trying to set up a fenced-in area for some sheep, but they have a limited amount of building material. The engineer gets up first and makes a square fence with the material, reasoning that it’s a pretty good working solution. “No no,” says the physicist, “there’s a better way.” He takes the fence and makes a circular pen, showing how it encompasses the maximum possible space with the given material.Then the mathematician speaks up: “No, no, there’s an even better way.” To the others’ amusement he proceeds to construct a little tiny fence around himself, then declares:”I define myself to be on the outside.”

There was this statistics student who, when driving his car, would always accelerate hard before coming to any junction, whizz straight over it , then slow down again once he’d got over it. One day, he took a passenger, who was understandably unnerved by his driving style, and asked him why he went so fast over junctions. The statistics student replied, “Well, statistically speaking, you are far more likely to have an accident at a junction, so I just make sure that I spend less time there.”

Theorem: log(-1) = 0Proof:a. log[(-1)^2] = 2 * log(-1)On the other hand:b. log[(-1)^2] = log(1) = 0Combining a) and b) gives:2* log(-1) = 0Divide both sides by 2:log(-1) = 0

According to a recent survey, 33 of the people say they participate in surveys.

1. Ten percent of all car thieves are left-handed2. All polar bears are left-handed3. If your car is stolen, there’s a 10 percent chance it was taken by a Polar bear1. 39 percent of unemployed men wear spectacles2. 80 percent of employed men wear spectacles3. Work stuffs up your eyesight1. All dogs are animals2. All cats are animals3. Therefore, all dogs are cats1. A total of 4000 cans are opened around the world every second2. Ten babies are conceived around the world every second3. Each time you open a can, you stand a 1 in 400 chance of becoming pregnant

Q: How do you tell one bathroom full of statisticians from another?A: Check the p-value.

Prove that the crocodile is longer than it is wide.Lemma 1. The crocodile is longer than it is green: Let’s look at the crocodile. It is long on the top and on the bottom, but it is green only on the top. Therefore, the crocodile is longer than it is green.Lemma 2. The crocodile is greener than it is wide: Let’s look at the crocodile. It is green along its length and width, but it is wide only along its width. Therefore, the crocodile is greener than it is wide.From Lemma 1 and Lemma 2 we conclude that the crocodile is longer than it is wide.

Some statisticians don’t drink because they are t-test totalers. Others drink the hard stuff as evidenced by the proliferation of box-and-whiskey plots.

The most important statistic for car manufacturers is autocorrelation.

Underwater ship builders are concerned with sub-optimization.

Q: Did you hear about the statistician who made a career change and became an surgeon specializing in ob/gyn?A: His specialty was histerectograms.