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!!!



Statistics play an important role in genetics. For instance, statistics prove that numbers of offspring is an inherited trait. If your parents didn't have any kids, odds are you won't either. (ba-dump-dum) :)



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Economy

Don't kid yourself. The deep recession of 2008-09 is really a depression.
Then to witness business guests clapping at the close of the NY Stock Exchange at the podium every single day is like statisticians clapping for nonsignificant results on hypotheisis tests!

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Quiz Day

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!!"

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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.


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Normal Curve Fiasco

Every semester that I teach the normal curve I emphasize on its importance to the rest of the class. I even discuss how one can "check" to see if their answer makes sense if they draw the right picture to begin with. So how is it that the following things have happened?

1. The probability of it taking longer than 25 minutes for the allergy medicine to work is 1.24?

2. The probablility of it taking between 15 and 20 minutes is -0.3214?

3. If the mean is 18, how is the 60th percentile 12.5, or better yet, 0.60?

4. Since I am an outlier, the claim is okay?

5. You did better on the second exam because you were CLOSER to the mean (as compared to being HIGHER than the mean).


I guess if I understood how these things happened, I would get a big teaching reward for solving these mistakes :)

The Final Exam

A statistics major was completely hung over the day of his final exam. It was a true/false test, so he decided to flip a coin for the answers. The statistics professor watched the student the entire two hours as he was flipping the coin... writing the answer... flipping the coin... writing the answer. At the end of the two hours, everyone else had left the final except for the one student. The professor walks up to his desk and interrupts the student, saying, "Listen, I have seen that you did not study for this statistics test, you didn't even open the exam. If you are just flipping a coin for your answer, what is taking you so long?"
The student replies bitterly (as he is still flipping the coin), "Shhh! I am checking my answers!"



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Success Bell Curve

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

Statistics One-Liners

Statistics means never having to say you're certain.

Statistics is the art of never having to say you're wrong.

Variance is what any two statisticians are at.

97.3% of all statistics are made up.

It's like the tale of the roadside merchant who was asked to explain how he could sell rabbit sandwiches so cheap. "Well," he explained, "I have to put some horse-meat in too. But I mix them 50:50. One horse, one rabbit." (Darrel Huff, How to Lie with Statistics)

Are statisticians normal?

Smoking is a leading cause of statistics.

43% of all statistics are worthless.

3 out of 4 Americans make up 75% of the population.

Death is 99 per cent fatal to laboratory rats.

A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.

A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.

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

Fett's Law: Never replicate a successful experiment.


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Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments of Statistical Inference

1. Thou shalt not hunt statistical inference with a shotgun.

2. Thou shalt not enter the valley of the methods of inference without an experimental design.

3. Thou shalt not make statistical inference in the absence of a model.

4. Thou shalt honor the assumptions of thy model.

5. Thy shalt not adulterate thy model to obtain significant results.

6. Thy shalt not covet thy colleagues' data.

7. Thy shalt not bear false witness against thy control group.

8. Thou shalt not worship the 0.05 significance level.

9. Thy shalt not apply large sample approximation in vain.

10. Thou shalt not infer causal relationships from statistical significance.


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It will only take 5 or 10 minutes...

I here this phrase from my students a lot. And while 5 or 10 minutes of my day is not a large chunk, let me put things into perspective...

I have about 120-140 students a semester at any given time. If each of these students wanted 5-10 minutes of my time per week, that would be 10-20 hours of my week (for 120 students) or 11.5-23 hours of my week (for 140 students).

So let's see, I am actually teaching in class about 10-12 hours a week, I have about 8 hours of office hours (which few students actually come to), spend about 5-10 hours planning for classes, about 5-10 hours grading for my classes. Oh yeah, and I am supposed to have about 8-12 hours to do scholarship and service (i.e. researchy things and meetings). This by itself adds up to 36 - 52 hours a week. This doesn't count my time for lunch, talking with fellow colleagues about the classes, my blogging :), etc.

Alright, that is my rant of the day :)

Bad Stat Student Comments - Take 1

"There is more data to the left of the median than there is to the right"

"How can you trust a RANDOM sample?"

"How can you keep a job if you can't guarntee the results?"

"The data appears to be screwed to the left"



Hopefully, you get the humor :)

A Stat Nerd gone too far

A YouTube video of a guy who took "Baby got Back" and made "Baby got Stats" - pretty funny lyrics if you get it :)

watch video