The CAUSE Cartoon Caption Contest for August is now taking entries

The Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education is happy to announce our 27th Cartoon Caption Contest (that’s right – more than two years now).  Each month a cartoon, drawn by British cartoonist John Landers, will be posted for you and your students to suggest statistical captions.  Note that the cartoons are posted at the beginning of the month month and submissions are due at the end of the month regardless of when the winners are announced. Student entries are always welcome and this can be a fun exercise to assign to your class.

The next cartoon and the entry rules for the contest ending August 31st are at  
https://www.causeweb.org/cause/caption-contest/august/2018/submissions
The best captions will be posted on CAUSEweb and the winner(s) will receive their choice of a coffee mug or t-shirt imprinted with the cartoon.

Enjoy.

July Results:  The July caption contest had 19 entries and featured a cartoon of a diverse group of people staring at a time series plot.  The plot of sales versus time shows a generally downward trend but with a single very large blip to a high value at a single time point. The winning caption for the July contest was “It's always the same: just before the exam, book sales spike,” written by Karsten Luebke from FOM University in Germany.  The caption should prove helpful in discussing how context matters in thinking about trend and “Seasonal” patterns in time series. Honorable mentions this month went to Jim Alloway from EMSQ Associates for his submission: “… and this is why we validate the data before plotting it” and to Larry Lesser from The University of Texas at El Paso for his entry “Fireworks sales skyrocket the first few days of July.”

Thanks to everyone who submitted a caption and remember to let your students know about the CAUSE caption contest!