Fun

"Failing the possibility of measuring that which you desire, the lust for measurement may, for example, merely result in your measuring something else - and perhaps forgetting the difference - or in your ignoring some things because they cannot be measured." A quote by British statistician George Udny Yule that can be used in discussing the validity of measurements. The quote is contained on the last page of his famous 1921 British Journal of Psychology paper "The essentials of mental measurement." The quote is commonly paraphrased as "In our lust for measurement, we frequently measure that which we can rather than that which we wish to measure... and forget that there is a difference."

A song to reflect on the excitement of discovering the discipline of statistics. The song is a parody of "walking in Memphis," the 1991 hit of Grammy-winning artist Marc Cohn. The lyrics were written by Lawrence Mark Lesser of University of Texas at El Paso who first published them in the August 2014 issue of Amstat News. This song could enhance an outreach context, a general celebration of statistics, or serve to overview a statistical literacy or introductory statistics class.

"America is shamefully inadequate at teaching statistics. A student can travel from kindergarten to a Ph.D. without ever encountering the subject. Yet statistics are ubiquitous in life, and so should be statistical reasoning." A quote by American economist Alan S. Blinder (1945 - ) that can be used for discussing the importance of statistics and statistical reasoning. The quote appeared in the New York Times Sunday Book Review on December 27, 2103 where Dr. Blinder was commenting on the importance of "The Signal and the Noise," a popular book by statistician Nate Silver.

"The key to good decision making is evaluating the available information - the data - and combining it with your own estimates of pluses and minuses." A quote by Brown University economist Emily Fair Oster (1980 - ) that can be used in discussing the use of data in decision making or in discussing the Bayesian idea of updating prior knowledge with data. The quote is contained in an August 9, 2013 essay in the Wall Street Journal written by Dr. Oster.