Truths or almost a truth

• There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

• Attributed by Mark Twain to Benjamin Disraeli

Better learn now!!!

• It is important for every honest man to learn statistics as the crooks already know it.– An American Senator

• An engineer, consultant and statistician were driving down a steep mountain road one evening. All of a sudden the brakes failed and the car careened down the road out of control.. They all got out, shaken by their narrow escape from death, but otherwise unharmed.

• The consultant stopped all traffic and said: "To fix this problem we need to organise a team, have meetings, write a process of continuous improvement, develop a solution."

• The engineer said: "No! . I have my trusty penknife here and will take apart the brake system, isolate the problem and correct it. Only you need to lift the car. "

• The statistician said: "No - you're both wrong! Let's push all the cars up the hill and see if it happens again. Only then we have a better sample size!!"

Sample size • One day there was a fire in a wastebasket in the

Dean's office and in rushed a physicist, a chemist, and a statistician. The physicist immediately starts to work on how much energy would have to be removed from the fire to stop the combustion. The chemist works on which reagent would have to be added to the fire to prevent oxidation. While they are doing this, the statistician is setting fires to all the other wastebaskets in the office. "What are you doing?" they demanded. "Well to solve the problem, obviously you need a large sample size" the statistician replies

• If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.

• Paul Harvey News, 1979

On mean… ness

• Three statisticians went out hunting, and came across a large deer. The first statistician fired, but missed, by a meter to the left. The second statistician fired, but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third statistician didn't fire, but shouted in triumph, "On the average we got it! and without firing"

It is our job

• 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?"

On mean..ness

• With one foot in a bucket of ice water, and one foot in a bucket of boiling water, you are, on the average, comfortable

Confidence(confidentially)

• Logic is a systematic method for getting the wrong conclusion with confidence.Statistics is a systematic method for getting the wrong conclusion with 95% confidence.

Good information

• I asked a statistician for his phone number... and he gave me a confidence interval ie between 27453453 to 2745356. with 95% confidence.

Absolutely right

• It is proven that the celebration of birthdays is healthy. Statistics show that those people who celebrate the most birthdays become the oldest.

It is just a job

• Why is a physician held in much higher esteem than a statistician?

• A physician makes an analysis of a complex illness whereas a statistician makes you ill with a complex analysis. (and then you need to go to physician)