Basic Applied Statistics 200
Your mother is so bad at statistics...

A professor recently asked a student to explain a p-value, and "make it so clear, even your mom could understand it". The student dutifully explained the p-value, but secretly wished he could retaliate with an insult like one of these, contributed by students in Stat 200 Spring 2011:

    (A.A.) Your mama is so bad at stats, she thinks a retrospective observational study means they wear clothes from the 70s and do a lot of disco.

    (T.B.) Your dad is so bad at stats he thinks degrees of freedom is about how likely someone will get out of jail.

    (M.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she said she couldn't use a stem and leaf plot because she has allergies.

    (K.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thought you use z for small samples.

    (A.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats that she orders a beer everytime she sees a bar graph.

    (L.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thought a large p-value meant her urine was worth a lot of money.

    (I.C.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks inference is the same thing as data production.

    (L.C.) Your mom is SO bad at stats that she thinks big X-bar is the same as small x-bar only all grown up!

    (J.C.) Your momma is so dumb she thinks age is a categorical value.

    (M.C.) Your momma is so bad at stats she thought p-hat was something you wear when it's sunny outside.

    (J.D.) Your mama's so bad at stats that she thinks you multiply MSG and MSE to find the F statistic on an ANOVA table instead of divide.

    (A.D.) Your mom is so bad at stats that she said the borderline value for a t statistic was 3 for a LARGE sample!

    (L.F.) Your mom is so bad at stats, the only slopes she's heard of are at Seven Springs.

    (R.G.) She thinks a chi-square is a type of line dance.

    (K.H.) Your mother is so bad at stats she thinks a box and whiskers plot is an evil plan made by a cat.

    (L.H.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks ANOVA is a university.

    (N.J.) Your dad is so bad at stats he thinks right-skewed comes from low outliers.

    (M.K.) Your mama so fat she once entered a small research study and raised the n from 13 to 23.

    (S.K.) Your dad is so bad at stats he said that mu is equal to zero for the alternative hypothesis.

    (C.L.) Your mom is so bad at stats that she reported a negative chi-squared value.

    (C.L.) Your cousin is so bad at stats he thought the probability of flipping a coin and getting heads was 1.

    (C.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats that she accepted the null hypothesis when zero was NOT contained in the confidence interval!

    (G.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she uses a scatterplot to display two categorical variables.

    (L.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thought a larger sample size, smaller standard deviation, and lower level of confidence would produce a wider interval.

    (S.M.) Yo momma is so bad at stats, when told ANOVA was going to be performed, she asked where she should go outside to get the best view.

    (V.P.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks outliers affect the median.

    (K.P.) Your mom is so bad at stats, she didn't square the observed minus expected counts whencalculating her chi-square statistics.

    (A.P.) Your mom is so bad at stats, her closed survey questions have unlimited possible responses.

    (S.R.) Your mom is so bad at stats, she thinks n is a test statistic.

    (S.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a scatterplot displays a relationship between two categorical variables.

    (A.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she can't tell the difference between a histogram and a bar graph.

    (M.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she didn't know the rule of thumb for sample size in chi-square says that sample sizes must be large enough to offset non-normality of distributions!

    (S.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats that she thinks probability and statistical inference are the same thing.

    (D.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks ANOVA is a show on PBS.

    (B.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a histogram is something her doctor does.

    Your mother's so bad at stats, she thinks a false positive is a Type II Error.

    (R.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she called the Ho a hoe.

    (X.X.) Your mom is so bad at stats she failed it three times in a row. (My aunt was the one that failed stats 3 times at Penn State in the 80s!)

    (A.W.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks x-bar and mu are the same thing!

    (J.W.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a high r value means there is strong evidence.

    (N.A.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks there is a 100% confidence interval.

    (C.A.) Yo mamma is so old, she thinks shape, center, and spread are directions for a Safe Senior Sex PSA.

    (J.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks the confidence interval gets narrower when the sample size increases.

    (Z.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks scatterplot points tightly clustered around a line indicate a weak relationship.

    (S.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she doesn't know where to find the typical size of the prediction error for a sample.

    (A.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a graph with a few high values is skewed left.

    (I.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats that she accepted the null AND the alternative hypotheses.

    (C.B.) Your momma is so bad at stats she thinks a large z-score implies a large p-value.

    (A.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks spread is something you put on toast.

    (V.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks in a paired design, you can separate the values that are meant to be together.

    (J.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats, she invited 30 people to her tea party so it would be a "z" party.

    (M.C.) Your mom is so bad at stats, she thinks you measure if a p-value is small or not using a ruler.

    (C.C.) Your mom is so bad at stats when she was asked to do a t-test, she thought she'd be drinking different varieties of Lipton.

    (M.C.) Your momma is so bad at stats she mistakes 0.9 as a low p-value.

    (K.C.) Your mom is so bad at stats she doesn't know an alternative can be one-sided or two-sided.

    (M.C.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks mu stands for sample proportion.

    (S.D.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a p-value of 1 is small.

    (K.D.) Your mom is so bad at stats she rejects the null hypothesis when p-hat is less than .05.

    (R.S.) Yo mamma is so bad at stats she uses a scatterplot instead of a boxplot.

    (L.D.) Your mommas so bad at stats, she's the lowest outlier on the graph.

    (M.D.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks r in a regression stands for rate when it actually is about correlation!

    (M.G.) Your mom is so bad at stats she doesn't know what the slope and y-intercept are even when she's given the regression equation.

    (E.G.) Your mom is so bad at stats that she somehow makes Type I and Type II Errors at the same time.

    (S.G.) Your mom is so bad at stats that when she makes a confidence interval she doesn't use a multiplier.

    (K.G.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a z score of 0 means the p-value is statistically significant.

    (R.G.) Your mom is so bad at stats she said the sample was unbiased when she asked your dad whether or not she was pretty.

    (R.H.) Yo Momma's so ugly, even a paired t test showed no improvement for her attractiveness after surgery.

    (O.H.) Yo momma's so bad at stats she threw you a baby shower after you said your FirstResponse test was a Type I error.

    (J.H.) Yo momma is so bad at stats that for one categorical variable she tried displaying it through a scatterplot!

    (R.J.) Your mom is so bad at stats she tried to display 2 quantitative variables with a pie chart.

    (C.J.) Your dad is so bad at stats he found a z-score without knowing the population standard deviation.

    (M.K.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thought she needed a toilet to find the p-value.

    (J.K.) Your mom is so bad at stats she doesn't know how to properly display and summarize variables.

    (E.L.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks the P.I. is the mean response to a subpopulation with a given x value.

    (K.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a histogram is a unit to measure how much a snake weighs.

    (A.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she says p-carrot not p-hat.

    (C.M.) Your mom's so bad at stats she didn't know sample size affects spread and shape of the distribution of the sample mean.

    (K.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks the 68-95-99.7 rule applies to non-normal distributions too.

    (V.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a paired design involves fruit.

    (A.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thought 4 standard deviations above the mean was extremely normal.

    (K.N.) Your mom is so bad at stats she uses x-bar in her null hypothesis.

    (S.P.) Your mom is so bad at stats she made a confidence interval using t when sigma was known.

    (A.R.) Your mom is so bad at stats she tries to make a two-way table with one quantitative variable.

    (M.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she doesn't know a t statistic from an F statistic.

    (E.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks ANOVA is a star.

    (L.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she doesn't know the probability of getting heads when she flips a coin.

    (M.T.) Your mom is so bad at stats she asked women about their weight and called her study "unbiased".

    (E.T.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks mu is the sample size.

    (J.V.) Your mom is so bad at stats she uses a 70-92-98.7 Rule.

    (I.V.) Your mom is so bad at stats she'd reject the null hypothesis with a LARGE p-value.

    (K.W.) Your mom is so bad at stats she added the probabilities together when she used the "And" rule.

    (K.W.) Your mom is so bad at stats she skews the IQ curve left.

    (L.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she uses a multiplier of 2 when calculating a 90% confidence interval.

    (A.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks the higher the confidence level, the narrower the interval.

    (R.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks mini-tab is used to figure out how much to tip at a restaurant.

    (A.B.) Your dad is so bad at stats he doesn't know that when going from one-sided to two-sided you simply double the p-value.

    (L.C.) Your mama's so bad at stats, she assumed the shape of x-bar for random samples of size n is approximately normal when n was only 5.

    (M.C.) Your dad is so bad at stats, we had to invent a Type 3 Error for any problem he tries.

    (A.C.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a large p-value and a large z-value mean the same thing.

    (H.C.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks mu is the sound a cat makes.

    (R.D.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks the relationship is weak when r=.997.

    (D.D.) Your mom is so stupid she thought that categorical variables were associated with cats.

    (R.D.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a CI is wider than a PI.

    (E.E.) Your mom is so bad at stats she didn't even divide by the square root of n for standard deviation of a sample mean.

    (E.E.) Your mom is so bad at stats that she got a +1.5 correlation.

    (A.F.) Your dad is so bad at stats he thinks a small sample makes for a great study design.

    (A.F.) Your mom is so bad at stats she got an F on the F test.

    (A.F.) Your mom is so bad at stats when she hears "P-value" she thinks of protein value.

    (G.H.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks ANOVA is a car.

    (M.K.) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she can't do Minitab even though the step-by-step directions are given for you.

    (A.L.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks gender is a quantitative variable.

    (M.L.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks an observational study can prove causation.

    (C.L.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks chi-square degrees of freedom is (c+1)x(r+1).

    (J.L.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a two-way table is where food is eaten.

    (C.L.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a z-score is how good you are at catching z's at night.

    (A.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks it's plus or minus 1 standard deviation for 95% of the data in a normal distribution instead of 2.

    (A.M.) Your mom is so bad at stats she claims the number of tails possible in two coin flips is a continuous random variable.

    (R.O.) Your mom is so bad at stats she assumes normality even when there aren't at least 10 in and out of the group.

    (H.R.) Your mama's so bad at stats she uses a two-sample design even when displaying data comparing the ages of each student's set of parents.

    (C.R.) Your momma's so bad at stats she thinks population mean mu is a statistic!

    (B.R.) Your mom is so bad at statistics she puts an equal sign in the alternative hypothesis.

    (I.S.) Your momma is so bad at stats she lets a p-value of .865 convince her of an alternative hypothesis!

    (B.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats her alternative hypothesis for ANOVA is mu1 not equal to mu2 not equal to mu3.

    (A.S.) Your momma so dumb she thinks a 99% CI is narrower than a 95% CI.

    (J.S.) Your mama is so bad at statistics she thought X bar was a new night club.

    (B.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks p > po is a two-sided alternative.

    (M.S.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks a confidence interval makes you feel better about yourself.

    (C.S.) Your momma is so bad at stats, she thought a double-blind study would be dangerous without a seeing-eye dog!

    (A.B.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thought a convenience sample had to be chosen from a convenience store.

    (Z.T.) Your mom is so bad at stats she can't even judge a scatterplot relationship as strong, moderate, or weak.

    (K.T.) Your momma is so bad at stags she calculated a negative F value from an ANOVA analysis.

    (E.W.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks the mean is denoted sigma or s, while the standard deviation is denoted mu or x-bar.

    (L.W.) Your mom is so bad at stats she thinks s and sigma are the same thing.

    (C.S.) she thinks z score is the french way to ask for the score of a game

    (Y.Z.) Your mom is so bad at stats she took a survey near the library, which asked whether the resopndents liked reading books. She said it was well constructed and the place was so suitable for doing the survey. But it was near the library: the results will be overestimated.

    Your mom is so bad at stats she doesn't know that when the t statistic is large that the p-value is small and there is strong evidence to accept the Ho!

    Your mom is so bad at stats that she said the one-tail p-value was half the value of a two-tail p-value!

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