The Queensland Branch held a funny stats competition for the Christmas 2010 event. There were 31 entries which came from all over the world. The winner of the 200 dollar Amazon voucher was Clive Osmond, MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, UK.
Winner
A sincere and grateful student approached me at the end of a lecture on how to calculate the mean..... "Thank you so much for the lucid explanation. Just one query. I know that this big sigma thing means "some of the x's". But, how do I know which ones to choose?!"
Second
I've a few entries culled from answers given by students on statistics exams of mine:
(i) Q: What is meant by the term "least squares regression line”
A: The least squares regression line is the regression line that passes through the least number of squares.
(ii) Q: When may you use a Z-test to test for a single population mean, when you only have a sample of size 10?
A: When 10>30
(iii) I once took over a course and introduced a question where a table of data with variables "Sex" (Male or female), "Distance" (from local cinema), "Satisfaction" (Rating out of 10 of their satisfaction with the cinema) and "Name" (name of movie they saw) and part of the question was to state whether each variable was nominal, ordinal or continuous. As it never had been asked before this caught a lot of people out, and many students resorted to matching up the variables with the categories at random. One girl told me that "Sex is continuous but satisfaction is nominal"!
Third
A lecturer friend of mine is a lecturer in statistics. She started her lecture by showing an example where balls are drawn from an urn. She then said: "… but Statistics is not only about balls". The whole auditorium was laughing. She then realised what she just said.
