Due to the holidays we had just 11 submissions for the January caption contest that featured a cartoon showing a line getting on an elevator including 5 people, 2 mice, two ducks, and a goat – with a directory showing that Simpson’s Lab is on the 2nd floor and the other floors have clinics, labs, and dental offices.
The January caption contest was won by (now three-time winner) Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. Larry’s caption “The Elevator Paradox has its ups and downs,” was selected for its potential use in a probability course to foster a discussion about the elevator paradox as well as other elevator related probability problems.
Two honorable mentions that rose to the top of the judging included “Dr. Peterson was used to long lines at the elevator, but this was no normal distribution,” written by Robert Garrett a student at Miami University and “Please hit 3 and 5. Those are Simpson's pair-a-ducks, and tell Hansen he'd better use stratified sampling!” written by an anonymous author. The cartoon may be well suited to discussing the idea of stratification into two groups such as people vs animals or animals with teeth vs those without (the ducks).