The April caption contest had 47 entries and featured a cartoon showing two men out in the rain. One man is standing under an umbrella that looks like a normal curve while the other guy is being poked in the eye by the "tail" end of the umbrella.
There were two co-winners for the April contest. The first was "Open your eyes to catch the significant events occurring at the tails," written by Debmalya Nandy, a student at Penn State University (60% of this month’s entries were from students). Debmalya's caption can be readily used in discussing the effect of outliers – especially on significance testing. The second winner was "Actuaries write umbrella policies to cover freak accidents," by Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso. Larry's caption makes the cartoon useful in applied probability courses to discuss the nature of actuarial work and the importance of accounting for rare events.
One honorable mention this month goes to "If you don't meet the Normality assumption, you're left out in the rain!" written by Chantal Larose from Eastern Connecticut State University. A rare double honorable mention goes to Jim Alloway from EMSQ Associates for two great captions "Being in the middle of the normal curve is comfortable; it's the tails that you have to watch out for," and for "Ignoring the tails will get you every time."