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Statistical Humor! from Bill Millers archive


A statistician's wife had twins. He was delighted. He rang the minister who was also delighted. "Bring them to church on Sunday and we'll baptize them," said the minister. "No," replied the statistician. "Baptize one.
We'll keep the other as a control."

A guy is flying in a hot air balloon and he's lost. So he lowers himself over a field and shouts to a guy on the ground:
"Can you tell me where I am, and which way I'm headed?"
"Sure! You're at 43 degrees, 12 minutes, 21.2 seconds north; 123 degrees, 8 minutes, 12.8 seconds west. You're at 212 meters above sea level. Right now, you're hovering, but on your way in here you were at a speed of 1.83 meters per second at 1.929 radians"
"Thanks! By the way, are you a statistician?"
"I am! But how did you know?"
"Everything you've told me is completely accurate; you gave me more detail than I needed, and you told me in such a way
that it's no use to me at all!"
"Dang! By the way, are you a principal investigator?"
"Geeze! How'd you know that????"
"You don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going. You got where you are by blowing hot air,
you start asking questions after you get into trouble, and you're in exactly the same spot you were a few minutes ago,
but now, somehow, it's my fault!

George Burns said that "If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age."

Two statisticians were traveling in an airplane from LA to New York. About an hour into the flight, the pilot announced that they had lost an engine, but don't worry, there are three left. However, instead of 5 hours it would take 7 hours to get to New York. A little later, he announced that a second engine failed, and they still had two left, but it would take 10 hours to get to New York. Somewhat later, the pilot again came on the intercom and announced that a third engine had died. Never fear, he announced, because the plane could fly on a single engine. However, it would now take 18 hours to get to New York.
At this point, one statistician turned to the other and said, “Gee, I hope we don't lose that last engine, or we'll be up here forever!”

Statistics play an important role in genetics. For instance, statistics prove that numbers of offspring is an inherited trait.
If your parent didn't have any kids, odds are you won't either.

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!”

A statistician confidently tried to cross a river that was 1 meter deep on average. He drowned.

A mathematician, a physicist and a statistician went hunting for deer. When they chanced upon one buck lounging about, the mathematician fired first, missing the buck's nose by a few inches. The physicist then tried his hand, and missed the tail by a wee bit. The statistician started jumping up and down saying "We got him! We got him!"

"Being a statistician means never having to say you are certain."

I once asked out a statistician. She failed to reject me.

Why are open source statistical programming languages the best?
Because they R.

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

The average statistician is just plain mean.

One day there was a fire in a wastebasket in the office of the Dean of Sciences. 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?" the others demand. The statistician replies, "Well, to solve the problem, you obviously need a larger sample size."

What question does the Cauchy distribution hate to be asked?
Got a moment?

"So, for what reason did you try to bring a bomb on board?!"
"Let me explain. Statistics shows that the probability of a bomb being on an airplane is 1/1000. That's quite high if you think about it - so high that I wouldn't have any peace of mind on a flight."
"And what does this have to do with you bringing a bomb on board of a plane?"
"You see, since the probability of one bomb being on my plane is 1/1000, the chance that there are two bombs is 1/1000000. If I already bring one, the chance of another bomb being around is actually 1/1000000, and I am much safer..."

Statisticians do it with significance
Biostatisticians do it with power
Epidemiologists do it with populations
Bayesians do it with a posterior

Statisticians get paid to make errors.


Enjoy
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