"What we'd like vs What we get"
August Results:
The cartoon for our 111th cartoon caption contest in August is shown above. Amongst the submissions for the contest, the judges found the winning caption for the cartoon to be “What we'd like vs What we get,” submitted by Louis Rocconi from the University of Tennessee. Louis’ caption can be used to contrast the assumption that the individuals in a population are all available and waiting to be sampled versus the more likely truth that individuals generally do not want to take part in a survey and may feel bombarded with survey requests. Part B of the cartoon may also be used to discuss the interpretation of a confidence interval as what might happen when the process of taking a sample is repeated by many many pollsters. Our first honorable mentions this month goes to Julie Skokan from North Broward Preparatory School for her caption “Randomness can be systematic and chaos doesn't mean random,” to help discuss the idea that randomness is introduced in surveys and experiments as a well-defined process with known attributes that forms the underpinning of statistical methods and is not intended to be any haphazard occurrence with unknown attributes. A second honorable mention goes to Erin Franke, a student at Carnegie Mellon University for the caption “While survey method A was a bit time consuming, there was no way to find the signal in the noise of method B,” which again reflects on the chaotic nature of the process depicted in part B of the cartoon and how variability makes estimates less reliable.
Thanks to everyone who submitted a caption and congratulations to our winners!