The May caption contest featured a cartoon showing a weary man crawling in the dessert. You can see that his path was originally headed toward an oasis with water, but he has changed course and is heading toward a site with some old graphs and other statistical artifacts half buried in the sand.
The winning caption for the May contest was “The search for a truly normal distribution ends, yet again, in a mirage,” written by Dashiell Young-Saver from the Knowledge Is Power Program Public Schools. Dashiell’s caption can be used to discuss the appropriateness of the normal errors assumption in a variety of settings.
An honorable mention this month goes to Francois Bereaud from San Diego Miramar College for the caption: “In a desert of misinformation, statistics provides an oasis of clarity,” which might be used to discuss the overall value of statistics for important applications.