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)