The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education is happy to announce our 61st Cartoon Caption Contest – now ongoing every month for over five years!  Each month a cartoon, drawn by British cartoonist John Landers, is posted for you and your students to suggest statistical captions (cartoons are posted at the beginning of the month and submissions are due at the end of the month).   The caption contest is offered as a fun way to get your students thinking independently about statistical concepts. 

 

The next cartoon and the entry rules for the contest ending June 30 are at   

https://www.causeweb.org/cause/caption-contest/june/2021/submissions 

 

The caption contest is a little different this month.  In the picture there is a small sign within the cartoon.  Thus, this month’s challenge is to provide what should be written on the sign and to provide a caption for the full cartoon. 

 

The best submission will be posted on CAUSEweb and the winner(s) will receive their choice of a coffee mug or t-shirt imprinted with the final cartoon. 

 

 

Enjoy. 

 

May Results:  The May caption contest featured a cartoon showing a weary man crawling in the dessert.  You can see that his path was originally headed toward an oasis with water, but he has changed course and is heading toward a site with some old graphs and other statistical artifacts half buried in the sand. The winning caption for the May contest was “The search for a truly normal distribution ends, yet again, in a mirage,” written by Dashiell Young-Saver from the Knowledge Is Power Program Public Schools.  Dashiell’s caption can be used to discuss the appropriateness of the normal errors assumption in a variety of settings.  An honorable mention this month goes to Francois Bereaud from San Diego Miramar College for the caption: “In a desert of misinformation, statistics provides an oasis of clarity,” which might be used to discuss the overall value of statistics for important applications. 

 

Thanks to everyone who submitted a caption and congratulations to our winners!