Statistics Poetry

[Karabiner]

Love the Motherland, Love Statistics

In Life
Some mock me for doing statistics
Some loathe me and statistics
Some don’t understand what statistics are
Why is it that statistics
Put a calm smile on my face?
Because of statistics I can solve the deepest mysteries
Because of statistics I will not be lonely again, playing in the data
Because of statistics I can rearrange the stars in the skies above

(by Chinese statistician Wang Jiaowei [translated],
The Wall Street Journal, September 26-27, 2009,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125390923281341865.html)


TABLE OF CONTENTS

* Romantic

Love the Motherland, Love Statistics
by Wang Jiaowei

Dissertation Blues or Why I should have paid attention in stats class
by Peter Flom
I've designed a great experiment
And collected all my data.
I've no idea what it all means
I'll get to that stuff later…

Me and my buddies did a few studies
by Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice
We wish we could acknowledge
A fancy research grant
But since ours was rejected
Unfortunately we can't…

Outliers
by Ulric Lund
Outliers we dread,
But luckily they're few…

Three Haikus
by Smith College MTH190 spring 2005 and spring 2010 classes
Found correlation
Careful, it's not causation…

Hiawatha Designs an Experiment
by Maurice Kendall
Hiawatha, mighty hunter,
He could shoot ten arrows upward,
Shoot them with such strength and swiftness
That the last had left the bow-string
Ere the first to earth descended…

Some Studies That I Like To Quote (song)
by James McCormack
Guidelines made me feel so happy I could die
I told my patients it was good enough
To lower glucose make them unconscious
I put my 95 year-olds on a statin…

Statistics / La statistica
by Carlo Alberti Salustri, alias Trilussa
Do you know what statistics is? A thing
that’s used to record a general tale
of the newborn people, those with an ail,
the dead, the imprisoned and those marrying…

Statisticamente Honky Tonk (song)
by Vincenzo Patrumo
I love statistics and also I’ve been studying it for a while
But there is something I still don’t know
Something so unexplainable…

Regression to the Mean [Critical Thinking]
by Andrew Porter
If something varies normally between two far extremes,
It usually swings back naturally to values in between.
From sport to crime and illnesses, we see this common theme,
An effect we call, statistically, ‘regression to the mean’…

Statistics Song (Original) *
by AverageAtBestBand
In my advanced placement statistics class, this passed full year
I have learned a lot of things you really need to hear
I know you might not understand these feelings deep inside
But we should be binomial so we need to collide…

The Medical Advisor's Lament
by Guernsey McPearson
What's the use of statisticians
When you need to make decisions?
All they do is drive physicians
Slowly round the bend…

Valentine's day statistical poems *
by Elissa Brown
H0: All is lost, our love is not mean to be
Ha: Oh happy day, you really like me…

It ain't necessarily so (song)
by Michael Greenacre
It ain't necessarily so,
It ain't necessarily so
That for models to be formal
Errors have to be normal…

Real Math *
by Scott Schulz
The meter is running:
A measured stare,
A moment of reckoning.
I assay a smile…

Two limericks
by Peter Flom
A frequentist fellow named Smith
Kept silent (he pleaded the fifth)…

A statistics haiku
by Peter Flom

Avoiding diSASters
by Peter Flom
SAS can be a powerful tool,
But misapply it, and look a fool…

Meditation on Statistical Method
by J. V. Cunningham
Plato, despair!
We prove by norms
How numbers bear
Empiric forms…

Bayesian versus Frequentist song
by Corrigan Brothers
Toor a loo
toor a listics
this long running spat
in the world of statistics…

Nociones de Estadisica (Statistical Concepts)
by Leopoldo de Luis
Statistics is a princess of blue ice
that slides by circles of metal calculations
and drags gently to her cold domains...

The p-Value Song
by Michael Greenacre
Statistics, logistics, cladistics seem to me
To have a common theme scientifically
Economists, biologists with PhD degrees
They all need some proof of their theories…

Ode to Biostats
by Elizabeth Arend
To the left? To the right? There must be a skew!
Should have paid attention to that math review.
Now I find myself lost in stats,
Clinging to each word spoken in class…

Confidence Interval - an Epic Poem
by Daan van Schalkwijk
'My dearest people, oh my people'
The High King sighed in his high hall,
'Oh, how my heart desires to know you,
But could I count you? Not at all!' ...

The Generalized Linear Model
by John K. Kruschke
Straight and proportionate, deep in your core
All is orthogonal, ceiling to floor…

The Garden's Forking Paths
by John Schmidt
TWO paths diverged on a garden lane,
And knowing I could pick either one
And still seem science-y, saw my gain…

Beyond Average
by MC Skule
Do you find yourself asking, What is the point of stats?
Is the time spent learning it worth it just to pass a class?
Well there’s this thing called data, it has characteristics
And making data make sense is the power of statistics...

Statistics
by William Butler Yeats
'Those Platonists are a curse,' he said,
'God's fire upon the wane...

Each Canadian Statistician (song)
by Jeffrey Rosenthal
Each Canadian Statistician
Follows in the same tradition
We’re on a very special mission
To treat our data nice!...

Written at the Wall of the Forest Temple
by Su Shi
From the side, it's a mountain ridge.
Looking up, it's a single peak...

 

[Karabiner]

Dissertation Blues
or Why I should have paid attention in stats class
by Peter Flom

I've designed a great experiment
And collected all my data.
I've no idea what it all means
I'll get to that stuff later.

I've forgotten all the stats I learned,
And I never learned that much.
I needed it to pass my comps
But since then I've lost touch.

I'll do another lit review
And find another theory,
But when it's time to analyze,
Everything goes bleary.

So I hired a consultant
To tell me what I'd got
He looked at three years of my life
And answered "Not a lot".

"There is no dissertation here,
There aren't any theses
Basically what you have got
Is a great big pile of feces!"

"You should have called me years ago
Now get this through your head:
You've hired a physician
But the patient is quite dead".


Date: Fri, 25 Nov 1994 14:40:18 -0500 (EST)
From: FLOM@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU
To: edstat-l@jse.stat.ncsu.edu
Subject: A humorous poem

 

[Karabiner]

Me and my buddies did a few studies
by Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice

AUTHOR NOTE
We wish we could acknowledge
A fancy research grant
But since ours was rejected
Unfortunately we can't.
Still Larry, Jill, and Jerry
All need to be thanked
But as for the reviewers
Those bastards should be spanked.

INTRODUCTION
According to Germain & Johnson
(and also Smith, but cf Swanson)
People process information
From their current situation
Mainly from infatuation
- Only if they get the urge
From powerful affective surge
They get smart when touched by Cupid
Otherwise they're pretty stupid.
Other work on social thinking
Has provided findings linking
Self-conceptions and aggression
Especially amid repression
Before the topic was exhausted
The truth was found but then they lost it
Contradict'ry findings came out
Grand conclusions did a flameout
Meta-analyzed collections
Pointed opposite directions
Issues were still mixed and muddy
So we thought we'd do a study.
The goal of our investigation
Was to get a publication
Research purposes were clear:
We wanted to get our tenure here.
Sitting over cheapo beers
We bemoaned our stalled careers
Waxing cynical and leery
Groping for a brilliant theory
Wondered how to make a splash
And get some research funding cash
Toot our horn, like Diz Gillespie,
And get into JPSP,
Things like this, not any logic
Caused us to pursue this project.
As usual, our theory's cursed:
Freud or Heider said it first.
He thought it up but didn't test it
Back then, was 'nuff to just have guessed it.

METHOD
Though the recompense was meagre
Subjects signed up seaming eager
Possibly they liked our title
(A catchy one is often vital)
Sign-up sheets said bold and clear,
"Chocolate, money, sex, and beer".
Seated at computer screen,
Craving stimuli obscene
Instead we held them up for fools
and trotted out our usual tools
Slides of subliminal prime
(Software costs a pretty dime)
Timed IQ tests, pass or fail,
Here and there a Likert scale,
Questionnaires with spaces fillable,
Long dull lists of nonsense syllable
Variables are elusive?
We have measures more intrusive
Sensors on their private parts
Record their hiccups, burps, and farts
To reveal their state of mind
Through data patterns we shall find.
Polygraphs with lines a-wagging
Inform us their attention's lagging
So we push their affect button
Get their hormones all a-struttin'.
Manipulated and provoked
Their angry impulses were stoked
We got them hot under their collars
But then we paid them each two dollars
(A fair and proper settlement-
Besides, they signed informed consent.)
They listened to our full debriefing
And gave "the finger" before leaving.

RESULTS
To buttress our investigation
We checked the manipulation
Ratings on the questionnaire
Across conditions, did compare
And showed that in our lab'ratory
They believed our cover story
They fell for it, and what is more,
Rated us a total bore.
Next we turned with doubtful pleasure
To analyze dependent measure
Oh how we tried to beat the odds
Courting the statistics gods
Sacrifices, prayers, libations,
Logarithmic transformations,
Square, covary, standardize,
T-tests tell the sweetest lies.
LISREL made us feel a fool,
Reviewers, though, will think it’s cool.
Finally in our musty basement
Printouts showed to our amazement
Sort of a pink elephant
Our finding was significant!

DISCUSSION
Now it's time to tell our story
Of how our t-tests, in their glory,
may advance the stock of knowledge
(and our paychecks from the college).
Our results, and you can quote us,
Show that students mainly notice
Things romantic and lascivious
To all else they seem oblivious.
Alternative interpretations
Regarding our investigations
Puzzle and befog our brains
And in our asses give us pains
Not to mention blind reviewers
(Minds like knives and mouths like sewers)
But their suggestions were all heeded
But still, more research is needed.

CONCLUSION
The broadest point, as we reflect,
Is that the human intellect
Is ****er than you would expect.

Baumeister, R. F. & Tice, D. M. (1998). Me and my buddies did a few studies. Dialogue, the Newsletter of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 13(2), 16.

 

[ledzep]

"....You've hired a physician
But the patient is quite dead".

Priceless! As is often the case, statisticians are called upon only when there is a deep trouble.

Thanks K for sharing some wonderful and light-hearted poems.

 

[Karabiner]

Outliers
by Ulric Lund

Outliers we dread,
But luckily they're few.
When no one is looking,
We know what to do.

http://statistics.calpoly.edu/content/now-what-ulric-lund

 

[Karabiner]

Three Haikus

Found correlation
Careful, it's not causation
Variables may lurk

---

So many numbers
So little time left,
Whats that equation?

---

Simpson's paradox
Is only the beginning
Getting dangerous


From the Smith College MTH190 (Statistical Methods for Undergraduate Research) spring 2005 and spring 2010 classes
http://www.math.smith.edu/~nhorton/haikustat.html

A haiku consists of three lines.
The first and third lines must have 5 syllables each;
the second line must have seven.
Here, the requirement was dropped that a season
of the year be mentioned.

 

[Karabiner]

Hiawatha Designs an Experiment
by Maurice Kendall

Hiawatha, mighty hunter,
He could shoot ten arrows upward,
Shoot them with such strength and swiftness
That the last had left the bow-string
Ere the first to earth descended.

This was commonly regarded
As a feat of skill and cunning.
Several sarcastic spirits
Pointed out to him, however,
That it might be much more useful
If he sometimes hit the target.
"Why not shoot a little straighter
And employ a smaller sample?"
Hiawatha, who at college
Majored in applied statistics,
Consequently felt entitled
To instruct his fellow man
In any subject whatsoever,
Waxed exceedingly indignant,
Talked about the law of errors,
Talked about truncated normals,
Talked of loss of information,
Talked about his lack of bias,
Pointed out that (in the long run)
Independent observations,
Even though they missed the target,
Had an average point of impact
Very near the spot he aimed at,
With the possible exception
of a set of measure zero.

"This," they said, "was rather doubtful;
Anyway it didn't matter.
What resulted in the long run:
Either he must hit the target
Much more often than at present,
Or himself would have to pay for
All the arrows he had wasted."

Hiawatha, in a temper,
Quoted parts of R. A. Fisher,
Quoted Yates and quoted Finney,
Quoted reams of Oscar Kempthorne,
Quoted Anderson and Bancroft
(practically in extenso)
Trying to impress upon them
That what actually mattered
Was to estimate the error.

Several of them admitted:
"Such a thing might have its uses;
Still," they said, "he would do better
If he shot a little straighter."

Hiawatha, to convince them,
Organized a shooting contest.
Laid out in the proper manner
Of designs experimental
Recommended in the textbooks,
Mainly used for tasting tea
(but sometimes used in other cases)
Used factorial arrangements
And the theory of Galois,
Got a nicely balanced layout
And successfully confounded
Second order interactions.

All the other tribal marksmen,
Ignorant benighted creatures
Of experimental setups,
Used their time of preparation
Putting in a lot of practice
Merely shooting at the target.

Thus it happened in the contest
That their scores were most impressive
With one solitary exception.
This, I hate to have to say it,
Was the score of Hiawatha,
Who as usual shot his arrows,
Shot them with great strength and swiftness,
Managing to be unbiased,
Not however with a salvo
Managing to hit the target.

"There!" they said to Hiawatha,
"That is what we all expected."
Hiawatha, nothing daunted,
Called for pen and called for paper.
But analysis of variance
Finally produced the figures
Showing beyond all peradventure,
Everybody else was biased.
And the variance components
Did not differ from each other's,
Or from Hiawatha's.
(This last point it might be mentioned,
Would have been much more convincing
If he hadn't been compelled to
Estimate his own components
From experimental plots on
Which the values all were missing.)

Still they couldn't understand it,
So they couldn't raise objections.
(Which is what so often happens
with analysis of variance.)
All the same his fellow tribesmen,
Ignorant benighted heathens,
Took away his bow and arrows,
Said that though my Hiawatha
Was a brilliant statistician,
He was useless as a bowman.
As for variance components
Several of the more outspoken
Make primeval observations
Hurtful of the finer feelings
Even of the statistician.

In a corner of the forest
Sits alone my Hiawatha
Permanently cogitating
On the normal law of errors.
Wondering in idle moments
If perhaps increased precision
Might perhaps be sometimes better
Even at the cost of bias,
If one could thereby now and then
Register upon a target.

Kendall, Maurice (1959). Hiawatha Designs an Experiment. The American Statistician 13: 23-24.

 

[Karabiner]

Some Studies That I Like To Quote
by James McCormack

Guidelines made me feel so happy I could die
I told my patients it was good enough
To lower glucose make them unconscious
I put my 95 year-olds on a statin

I should have known all along that this was wrong
100 over 60 made them fall, they really fall
Stopping salt and fat did not make sense
I really should have looked at evidence
I didn't know that half of guidelines were just opinion

You say I need an RCT
One that actually shows a difference in a real outcome
I'm supposed to know the NNT, and discuss it with my patients
Are you kidding me?

Don't know what a p-value is
You say I need a Cochrane review to help me find some numbers
I hear some surrogates were wrong
And now I need some studies I'm supposed to quote

Now I need some studies I'm supposed to quote
Now I need some studies I'm supposed to quote

Now and then I think of all the things you had me measure
You had me thinking there was always something that was wrong
All that fibre was an adventure
Now I'm passing wicker furniture
Beta-blockers made me feel real slow
And now you telling me about some studies that you need to quote

But now I'm reading RCTs
You get a 1% reduction from a low dose statin

I know now that an A1C of less than 8 is good enough as long as you don't pee
Forget about your CRP
Just don't eat like a great fat pig and go get some activity
I think that I can help you now
I finally have some studies that I like to quote

A parody of the song "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye.

 

[Karabiner]

Statistics
By Carlo Alberti Salustri (1871-1950), alias Trilussa
Translated by Jordi Prats

Do you know what statistics is? A thing
that’s used to record a general tale
of the newborn people, those with an ail,
the dead, the imprisoned and those marrying.

But for me the statistic that is funny
happens when percentage enters the game,
so that, then, the mean is always the same
even for the person who has no money.

That is, from the calculations you make
in accordance to current statistics
one chicken per year you should take:

And, if your budget doesn’t allow you,
nevertheless allows it statistics
because someone other will eat two.

Original Version:

La statistica

Sai ched’è la statistica? E’ ‘na cosa
che serve pe’ fa’ un conto in generale
de la gente che nasce, che sta male
che more, che va in carcere e che spósa

Ma pe’ me la statistica curiosa
è dove c’entra la percentuale,
pe’ via che, lì, la media è sempre eguale
puro co’ la persona bisognosa.

Me spiego: da li conti che se fanno
seconno la statistica d’adesso
risurta che te tocca un pollo all’anno:

e, se nun entra ne le spese tue,
t’entra ne la statistica lo stesso
perché c’è un antro che ne magna due.

http://www.significancemagazine.org...Turkey-chickens-poetry___-and-statistics.html

 

[Karabiner]

Statisticamente Honky Tonk
by Vincenzo Patrumo

American Statistical Association Award 2011:
"Most Entertaining Spaghetti Western Video"

(Translation according to video subtitles)


Tonight on TV, there’s a talk show
Where they talk about GDP and inflation
They talk about statistics, work and occupation
And they talk about the growth of the population
Then what do I do?
I sit on the couch, legs propped up, beer in my hand
I’m all concentrated, I turn my cell phone off
Don’t bother me until tomorrow morning

(Refrain)
I love statistics and also I’ve been studying it for a while
But there is something I still don’t know
Something so unexplainable
There’s someone who eats two chickens
And there’s someone who eats none
But statistically each eats one
There’s some who don’t go on vacation
But if you go check, statistically they‘ve been at the beach for a month
There’s someone who looks at himself in the mirrow and thinks he’s obese
But statistically weighs 66 pounds
Statistically Honky Tonk

90% of those who have a Porsche
Every night bring a model or Miss Italy home
But if you have a Fiat Panda, Opel Astra or a van
You bring home the poster of a Playboy bunny

One out of four from a recent study
Might sound strange to you but they have mental problems
So if 3 of your best friends are sound and healthy
It means it is you who has mental problems

(Refrain)
I love statistics and also I’ve been studying it for a while
But there is something I still don’t know
Something so unexplainable
There’s someone who eats two chickens
And there’s someone who eats none
But statistically each eats one
There’s some who don’t go on vacation
But if you go check, statistically they‘ve been at the beach for a month
There’s someone who looks at himself in the mirrow and thinks he’s obese
But statistically weighs 66 pounds
Statistically Honky Tonk

 

[umirin]

These are pretty good, keep em coming!

 

[Karabiner]

Regression to the Mean [Critical Thinking]
A poem about...
why a common statistical phenomenon leads people to believe in nonsense
by Andrew Porter

If something varies normally between two far extremes,
It usually swings back naturally to values in between.
From sport to crime and illnesses, we see this common theme,
An effect we call, statistically, ‘regression to the mean’.

When Brucie plays his cards right and he’s holding up a queen,
You know that next a lower card is likely to be seen,
Because there are so many cards much lower than a queen.
It’s simple probability, it’s ‘regression to the mean’.

Random fluctuations of performances in sports,
Befuddle sports professionals, who use gimmicks of all sorts,
Crystals, magnets, copper bracelets they esteem,
But improvements in achievement are ‘regression to the mean’.

A man with awful backache, that sometimes gets much worse,
May turn to herbal remedies and swear his pain’s reversed.
Perhaps it has, but not because the herbalist intervened,
The pain will ease quite simply through ‘regression to the mean’.

Evidence-based treatments that doctors should assign,
Use tests that will be randomized, controlled and double-blind,
Stopping self-deception before those test-results are seen,
It stops them being fooled by ‘regression to the mean’.

Big international drug firms are rightly criticised,
For concealing contrary evidence and other sorts of lies,
So how come homeopathy and herbalists have been,
Permitted to bamboozle us with ‘regression to the mean’?

While scientific medicine cannot cure all ills,
It does do so much better than those homeopathic sugar pills,
That a child should die through want of proper treatment is obscene,
When wishful-thinking parents fall for ‘regression to the mean’.

When much that was untreatable is curable, it’s tragic
That patients turn from medicine to phony cure-all magic.
The alternative to thinking is delusionary dreams,
Alas, from death there will be no ‘regression to the mean’.

"This poem was inspired by a book called Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. This longer version of the poem
was entered for the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine (2010), alas it didn't win anything."
http://www.inkpotamus.com/content/regression-to-the-mean-long-version

 

[Karabiner]

Statistics Song (Original)
by AverageAtBestBand

In my advanced placement statistics class, this passed full year
I have learned a lot of things you really need to hear
I know you might not understand these feelings deep inside
But we should be binomial so we need to collide

With an alpha level of point-0-one I must reject the Null
'Cause there’s been a change within my heart, and now I’m such a fool
Lately my brain has been a random scattered plot
I’m ninety-five percent confident it’s cause I like you a lot

My normal model is centered at you
With a standard deviation of … love
Standard deviation of love.

Your z-score tells me that you are one in a million
And if you look you’ll see my heart is skew-right distribution
My feelings for you are disguised with a positive correlation
The more I’m spending time with you, the more the elevation

My normal model is centered at you
With a standard deviation of love
Standard deviation of love.

What’s the probability of my joy giving you
I would have to say it’s 1, cause it can’t go to 2

My normal model is centered at you,
With a standard deviation of love
Standard deviation of love

You’re my missing reactor, you’re my confounding factor, you make me feel like
My normal model is centered at you,
With a standard deviation of love..


Lyrics were transcripted from the video.

Thanks to Dason and helicon for help.

 

[Karabiner]

The Medical Advisor's Lament
by Guernsey McPearson

What's the use of statisticians
When you need to make decisions?
All they do is drive physicians
Slowly round the bend
What's the use of logic choppers
Lies, d*mned lies and great big whoppers
Thought police, computer coppers
When you're on a trend
Sod this reign of terror
Stuff their type one error
Student's t
The dreaded P
Kaplan-Meier curves and standard error
Intent to treat a
Rotten cheater
They're' obsessed with bloody beta
Life without would be much sweeter
Let them all go hang

All this sample stuff is phoney
All their spending rules baloney
And the dreaded Bonferonni
Brings us to our knees
Just when you've a fine impression
From your last computer session
They will claim it's all regression
Rob you of your Ps
Did you pre-determine?
If not you're just vermin
It's a shock
To find post hoc
Is not accepted as a way of learning
Group sequential
Evidential
In your trials experimental
Is the stuff to send you mental
Pass the Prozac please.

Frequentist approach you courted
Just when you had got it sorted
They the paradigm aborted
Made you change your ways
Every lesson that you heeded
It turns out is not now needed
It has all been superseded
You must turn to Bayes
It's not what you desire
Now the stakes are higher
Likelihood
May well be good
But now they pester you about your prior
Makes you wearier
Brings hysteria
If you want to feel much cheerier
Shove it up their d*mn posterior
Let them feel surprise!

http://www.senns.demon.co.uk/wpoetry.html

 

[Karabiner]

Valentine's day statistical poems
by Elissa Brown


H0: All is lost, our love is not mean to be
Ha: Oh happy day, you really like me
Our favorite test statistic says p=0.053
That’s a little high but it’s good enough for me

-

I’ve suffered through dates that were very extreme
When all I was hoping for was closer to the mean
Their knowledge of boring facts was encyclopedian
When it would have been better to be on the other side of the median
And eventually even their manners did erode
With scores for politeness nowhere near the mode
So I apologize for being so informal
But I’m so glad I finally found someone normal

-

I’m aiming for a p-value less than .01
That you and me together could have lots of fun
The R2 of those before you were really quite poor
But the multiple comparisons problem we’ll just ignore

-

A frequentist would say the chances of love are small,
using 1 in a million as an close approximation.
But I’d rather let a Bayseian make the call,
who would conclude it’s certain based on observed
information


A selection of Valentine's day statistical poems from
http://andrewgelman.com/2010/02/14/valentines_day/

 

[Karabiner]

It ain't necessarily so
Statistical Modelling Lyrics: Michael Greenacre

It ain't necessarily so,
It ain't necessarily so
That for models to be formal
Errors have to be normal
But it ain't necessarily so.

My data had values real skew,
Relationships nonlinear too,
But with spline approximation
Or Box-Cox transformation
My data are more normal than you!

Now it ain't necessarily so
That your deviance has to be low,
Use less parameters,
Less alphas and betas,
Then apply Akaike,
Although it sounds freaky,
And less will be more as you know...

It ain't necessarily so
It ain't necessarily so
That for models to be formal
Data have to be normal
But it ain't necessarily so.
It aint necessarily It aint necessarily
It aint necessarily It aint necessarily SO!

Inaugurating the 22nd International Workshop on Statistical Modelling, Barcelona, 2 July 2007
Performed by Gurdeep Stephens & Michael Greenacre
Music: George Gershwin

 

[Karabiner]

Real Math
by Scott Schulz

The meter is running:
A measured stare,
A moment of reckoning.
I assay a smile.

The angle of her lips
Is well defined.
She responds to polite necessity;
Inside, she calculates.

A functional relationship:
Completeness and consistency,
One-to-one and onto,
We approach asymptotically.

A strange attractor:
Cycle and permutation,
We rationalize
And find a common denominator.

The radius of convergence
Tends to zero in the limit.
We postulate love;
The proof eludes us:

Unbounded, infeasible,
Too many degrees of freedom.
We exchange numbers,
But diverge unsatisfied.

Rejected hypothesis:
She weighs the merits
Of a false negative
Versus a false positive.

Singular and empty,
Rational, perhaps, but dense,
I take another random walk,
Regenerate and renew.

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sschulz/wwww10.htm

 

[PeterFlom]

Thanks for posting my poem! It's the same Peter Flom, but that is about 5 e-mails ago.

 

[PeterFlom]

Two limericks
by Peter Flom

One for frequentists

A frequentist fellow named Smith
Kept silent (he pleaded the fifth)
When the judge inquired
Re assumptions required
To calculate p-values with

And one for Bayesians:

A young statistician named Myers
Says tenure is all he desires
But his dreams won’t be met,
He’ll be fired, I bet,
When they catch him adjusting his priors.

 

[PeterFlom]

A statistics haiku by Peter Flom

Hypothesis test?
Oh! p-value does not mean
What you think it does.