The October caption contest had 36 entries and featured a cartoon showing a children’s party where a blindfolded boy with a bat is swinging at a Piñata. Instead of candy, numbers are spilling out and other children are gathering them off of the ground.
The winning caption for the October contest was “Before computers, random numbers had to be generated by hand,” written by Anthony Bonifonte from Denison University. The caption was designed to instigate discussions on the use of random numbers in both designing and analyzing data.
An honorable mention this month goes to Jim Alloway from EMSQ Associates for his submission: “This is not what I meant when I told them to get a random sample!,” which can be used in discussing the difference between haphazard and random number generation. Another honorable mention goes to “A dataset is like a piñata. First you admire it, then you bludgeon it until it gives you the numbers you want,” by Robert Wentz of Mayo Clinic, which can be used to illustrate points in statistical ethics. A final honorable mention goes to Shawn Ortonat The Waterford School for his caption “The birthday party experiment was well designed; single blind with each participant receiving random numbers,” that can help to initiate a conversation about experimental designs.