The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education is happy to
announce our 66th Cartoon Caption Contest! 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 November 30 are at
https://www.causeweb.org/cause/caption-contest/november/2021/submissions<…
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.
October Results: The October caption contest featured a woman sitting at a desk next to a
cup of coffee and a computer with statistical plots on the screen. In front of her are
three boxes labelled “IN” (highest stack of papers), “OUT | IN” (smallest stack of
papers), and “OUT” (middle sized stack of papers. The winning caption for the October
contest was “When in doubt the data's better in than out” written by Erik Svenneby a
student at University of Colorado Boulder. Erik’s caption can be used to help start a
class conversation about the importance of avoiding the removal of outliers without
appropriate cause. An honorable mention this month goes to an anonymous entry for the
caption: “Surprising evidence that P(out | in) < P(out),” that also offers lesson
guidance for the instructor to ask their class “If something can only go in the
"OUT" pile if it first went through the "IN" pile, then is the
statement in the caption true, false, or possibly true or false?” (answer is false as
long as some papers don’t make it into the “IN” pile)
Thanks to everyone who submitted a caption and congratulations to our winners!