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We had 29 submissions for the October caption contest that featured a cartoon showing four magicians auditioning with each one reaching into a hat. One of the magicians has a much larger hat than the others (also the cartoon does not show the bottom half of the bodies of the other magicians).
The winning caption for the October contest was “Since Joe was the only one to do a power analysis before starting, he was the only one with the size necessary to get the desired effect,” written by Greg Snow from Brigham Young University. The judges felt that Greg’s caption provided a nice avenue for facilitating discussions of planning for adequate sample sizes in experiments.
An honorable mention in the same vein also goes to “The bigger the sample size, the bigger the magic,” written by Malcolm Wells, a student at New College of Florida. Another honorable mention was given to the caption: “The audience at the ASA magic show was so enamored with the big hat that they failed to notice that the statisticians with the traditional hats were levitating with no visible support,” written by Jim Alloway of EMSQ Associates. The latter caption may be used in discussing the value as well as the pitfalls of big data.