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 Honors
Stat 1000 Fall 2013:
(D.N.)
1. Your mom is so bad at statistics that she establishes relationships
with a large p-value.
2. Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thinks it's okay to express
the odds ratio the same way as relative risk.
3. Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thinks a left-skewed
distribution has most of its values to the left.
4. Your mom is so bad at statistics that she calculates probabilities
greater than 1.
5. Your mom is so bad at statistics that she performs inference with
unrepresentative samples.
(A.H.)
1) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thought a bar graph and a
histogram were identical.
2) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thought hair length was a
discrete random variable.
3) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she said an ANOVA was a
single-celled organism that uses pseudopods for movement. (an amoeba)
4) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she claimed that weight was the
explanatory variable in a study comparing gender and weight.
5) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she claimed the Hawthorne effect
was the feeling of euphoria people get after they read the Scarlet Letter.
(D.K.) The statistician was so bad at statistics that he said a z statistic of
1.9999999999999 was significant.
The statistician was so bad at statistics that when he got thrown into a
fire and then dumped into a freezing lake, he said, on average, he was OK.
The statistician was so bad at statistics, that he calculated zero degrees
of freedom while in prison
Your mom is so bad at statistics, that she brought a bar graph to an
Alcoholics Anonymous meeting
Your dad is so bad at statistics, that when he went to the x-bar while
still married
(H.P.) Your mom is so bad at statistics she thinks confidence intervals are used
to infer things about sample means
Your mom is so bad at statistics she handed out pears to subjects when
told to conduct a paired study.
Your mom is so bad at statistics she thought the z-curve was a dance move.
Your mom is so bad at statistics she summarized her quantitative variable
using proportions.
(N.T.)
1. Yo mama is so dumb with statistics that she though chi-squared was a sorority on campus.
2. Yo mama is so dumb she thought elementary statistics was a textbook for an elementary school.
3. Yo mama is so dumb with statistics that she thought that degrees of freedom was the # of civil rights people have
4. Yo mama is so dumb with statistics she says Ha every time she sees a girl dressed like a Ho.
5. Yo mama is so dumb with statistics she dropped the class when the professor started talking about ANOVA thinking she was at Villanova University, a school she despises.
(E.B.) 1.Your mom is so bad at statistics that she had a z score of -3 on her last exam.
2.Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thought you regressed 2 categorical variables.
3.Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thought a large P value was significant.
4.Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thought a higher sample size increased the confidence interval.
5.Your mom is so bad at statistics that she put the alternative hypothesis as the null.
(D.J.) ...when the French statistician explained that unusualness of values were
determined z-scores, she asked "based on which scores?"
...she mistook R-Sq to mean the the area of a circle divided by π.
...when overhearing a discussion between two statistics students
discussing the unusualness of high t-scores, she chimed in saying "yes,
very good tea is indeed extremely rare."
...she feels bad for null hypotheses that get rejected.
...she understood a study's results, which reported high significance
level, to imply that its findings were of great importance.
(S.B.) Your mom is so bad at statistics:
1. when she was told she scored an average on an exam, she thought people
were being mean.
2. when she got detention for interrupting the class, she feared she had
no degrees of freedom
3. the P-value of her scoring a zero on a stat midterm is 1
4. she thought she was supposed to be a tea taste critic when she was
asked to perform a t-test
5. she thought her friend Hawthorne would observe her every move, so she
tried to be discrete about her continuous MSG intake.
(S.M.) Your Mom is so bad at Statistics...
1) that she doesn't know the difference between an F-statistic and an F-grade that she'll get because she's so bad at Statistics!
2) that she couldn't reject the null hypothesis that she was so bad at Statistics!
3) that she doesn't know the difference between Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and the PBS special that she watched last night (NOVA)!
4) that she doesn't know the difference between standard deviation sigma, the standardized chi-squared statistic, and the fraternity that her own son pledged, Sigma Chi !
5) that she doesn't even know that SHE is the confounding variable in the progress of good statistical research !
(R.G.) 1. Your mom is so bad at statistics she thinks x-bar is the place you go
to for a good time.
2. Your mom is so bad at statistics she thinks ANOVA is a band from the 80s.
3. Your mom is so bad at statistics she thinks you wear a p-hat to a
birthday party.
4. Your mom is so bad at statistics she thinks a t score tells the quality
of a tea.
5. Your mom is so bad at statistics she rejected both the null and
alternative hypotheses.
(G.M.) 1) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thinks that going to Curves will help her find a normal distribution.
2) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she writes the "sum-to-one" probability rule as the "sum-2-1" probability rule.
3) Your mom is so bad at statistics that in the long run, 95% of the confidence intervals that she produces DON'T contain mu.
4) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she can't tell the difference between a left and right skewed sample distribution, and performs inference anyway.
5) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she found a way to commit both types of error in the same study.
(J.C.) 1.Your mom is so bad at statistics; she has both a Type I and Type II error.
2.Your mom is so bad at statistics; she rejects the null hypothesis at p-value of 1.
3.Your mom is so bad at statistics; she uses a sample size of 1 out of the US population.
4.Your mom is so bad at statistics; she determines data is middle skewed.
5.Your mom is so bad at statistics; she uses an f-test for one sample.
(G.A.) 1. Your dad is so bad at statistics, he thinks a t-test involves herbal concoctions and the queen of England!
2. Your dad is so bad at statistics he thinks a regression line fits one thing: your juvenile behavior!
3. Your dad is so bad at statistics, he thinks that ANOVA is your wonderfully named human friend helping you out in your research!
4. Your dad is so bad at statistics, he takes sample size n to be an amount of pudding given at the mall rather than a numerical subset of a population.
5. Your dad is so bad at statistics, he thinks inference can only be a "gut instinct" applied toward the finer details of life, without any statistic of parameter.
(T.T.)1. Your mom is so bad at statistics that she can't set a chi-squared table.
2. Your mom is so bad at statistics her divoce was a Type I error.
3. Your mom is so bad at statistics she used a t-test for random sample
that's not normal.
4. Your mom's so bad at statistics her she used a 100% confidence interval
to prove she's right.
5. Your mom's so bad at statistics she squared x^2.
(J.S.) Your mom is so bad at statistics that
-she thinks gender is a quantitative variable
-she thinks that if p < .05, it's a negative pregnancy test
-she thinks that chi-square is the Greek version of Times Square
-she thinks that a box and whisker plot is where a cat barber stores the hair
-she thinks the F-statistic is a sin
(J.R.) Your mom is so bad at statistics that she thinks that Delta Chi is the change in a chi-square value.
Your mom is so bad at statistics that she expects to have 2.5 kids.
Your mom is so bad at statistics that she talks about the evens ratio.
re so bad at statistics that you think your F statistic is huge You
(A.E.) Your mom is so b ad at statistics she brought forks and a bib for a lecture on pie charts.
Your mom is so bad at statistics she thought it was good her weight was significantly different with p<0.05.
Your mom is so bad at statistics she thought x-bar was a new strip club that opened. She wants to know if they are still hiring.
Your mom is so bad at statistics that her box and whisker plot was a picture of all her cats side by side.
Your mom is so bad at statistics she thought a bar chart was a list of popular drinks.
Your mom is so bad at statistics she drew a circle for her regression line.
Your mom is so bad at statistics she tried taking a standard deviation of a sample size of 1.
General Joke
How's the view from the top of the bell curve?