by Dane C. Joseph
Monsieur Dard, monsieur Dard: what a life that you have had
All those people whom you've met
along the way
Is it true, were you joking, when you
said that you'd invented
a means to harvest wheat grass from the hay
Monsieur Dard, monsieur Dard: who will share in your life's bard
The fifth grade English teacher gifting all those Cs
I'd forgotten that you'd meter at the board
like some used preacher
Still you wrote ninety-five times,
"By all means!"
Monsieur Dard, monsieur Dard: now you've
failed and fallen hard
succumbing to old vice and vain conversion
Chasing your moral ideals, committing misdeeds
with your Zs
Fisher's foes for sure do frown
on variation
Monsieur Dard, monsieur Dard: Gould warned you not to measure
that most fledging creature they call Hue– Man
now you'll never stop adding, dividing and regressing
You're addicted to perverse comparison
Normally I would believe that
the probability
of ranking students and their shoes is just too hard
Perhaps we should be thankful for those predicaments you handle
So I tip my hat to thee:
Monsieur Stan Dard
Lyric by Dennis Pearl
may sing to the tune of the KitKat jingle by Michael Levin and Ken Shuldman
Gimme a break
Gimme a break
Break me off the ends of that
Whole x-bar
Gimme a break
Gimme a break
Break me off the ends of that
Whole x-bar
That robust taste
Is gonna make your day
And everywhere you go
You hear the people say
Gimme a break
Gimme a break
Break me off the ends of that
Break me off the ends of that
Break me off the ends of that
Whole x-bar
Music and Lyric © 2018 Lawrence M. Lesser
When learnin’ ‘bout the mean, we wanna set a high bar;
Like the symbol for sample mean, we need a high bar!
More than procedure, here’s what its features are!
No bigger than the max, no less than the min;
Never past the max, or less than the min.
That makes a window x-bar is always in!
A value that equals 0 is part of the dataset.
If a value equals 0, it’s still in the dataset,
And sways calculation of the x-bar you get.
The mean might not have a value in reality,
Might not be a data point or value that could be:
Don’t know no household holdin’ 2.53!
Lay all the data points on a number line,
Lay all the data points on a weightless number line:
You’ll find at x-bar, it’s balanced fine!
Redistribute values so they’re all the same,
Level off the values so they’re all the same:
This fair share value the mean attains.
Take a deviation of each value from the mean,
Take a deviation of each value from the mean:
They all sum to 0: the proof is routine.
(Repeat Verse 1, changing “here’s” to “we know”)
Variation
Lyric © 2022 Lawrence M. Lesser
may be sung to the tune of "Vacation" by the Go-Go's
Can’t seem to get my mind off of mu
But I think more is needed to view
What made it so clear
Temperatures here
Are either near
40 or 100.
[CHORUS:]
Variation in the distribution
Variation – how the data lays
Location’s not enough alone
Variation – it is all around us
Variation links to chance of things
Variation – something we need to know
With a shift of values, what’s undone?
SD and IQR won’t run!
But a change of scale
Will make them both sail
But not percentiles
Or a z-score (Repeat Chorus)
by Lawrence Mark Lesser
Deal or No Deal
The banker offers
less than expected value,
as was expected.
62% Shooter’s 1-and-1
Expected number
of points is 1, the outcome
that is least likely!
Exchange Paradox
Dogs swap bowls and beds,
sure the other’s better like
Monty’s other door.
Negative Expected Value
Lottery tickets,
extended car warranty,
or health insurance.
Expectation in the Balance
Where distributions
balance like a see-saw with
one’s child more distant.
Unbiased
It is hard to speak
about expected value
and avoid bias.
The Point
I could reduce a
distribution to EV,
but that would be mean.