Resource Library

"Scaffolding" is a poem by Scottish poet Eveline Pye from Glasgow Caledonin University. The poem was originally published in the September 2011 issue of the bimonthly magazine Significance, in an article about Eveline Pye's statistical poetry. "Scaffolding" might be used in course discussions of the importance of checking assumptions in the application of statistical methods or of the value of statistical sleuthing in discovering hidden relationships.

Indeed, the laws of chance are just as necessary as the causal laws themselves. is a quote of quantum physicist David J. Bohm (1917- 1992). The quote appears on page 23 of his 1957 book "Causality and Chance in Modern Physics". The quote also appears in "Statistically Speaking: A dictionary of quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither.

Most real life statistical problems have one or more nonstandard features. There are no routine statistical question; only questionable statistical routines. is a quote by British Statistician Sir David R. Cox (1924 - ). The quote may be found on page 240 in Christopher Chatfield's 1991 article "Avoiding Statistical Pitfalls" in "Statistical Science".

...the most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making is a quote by English author Douglas Noel Adams (1952-2001) that can be used in teaching the importance of understanding the assumptions being made that underlie statistical inference. The quote is from the 1990 book "Last Chance to See" that was co-written with Mark Carwardine. It is part of a passage that Adams wrote about his experience watching a silverback gorilla in Zaire and trying to imagine what the animal was thinking about him.