Probability

  • (for Sally Clark 1964 – 2007)
    by Eveline Pye

    You, Sally Clark, solicitor,
    discover your son, Christopher
    dead in his Moses basket. Harry, born
    a year later, dies in his bouncy chair.

    Paediatrician for the crown,
    Sir Roy Meadow, tells the jury
    two cot deaths in the same family
    would occur only once in a century.

    Odds are one in seventy-three million,
    lower than the lottery, beyond all
    reasonable doubt. An easy decision:
    You must be guilty.

    At Styal Prison, the horde screams,
    Here's the nonce! Die woman, die!
    They bang on the door, clamber up,
    gawp as you cringe in a holding cell.

    At the second appeal, your body
    is free but your mind has crumpled.
    You drink until you die, 
    your third son, left without a mother.

    I tell this story to my medical students,
    show death by natural causes
    was more likely than murder.
    Silence

  • Q: How does a statistics department chair relay news about unforeseen policy changes?

    A: With a memorandom!

    Larry Lesser

  • How did the statistics student respond after his locker was broken into at school and his belongings scattered?

    He restored order by replacing his combination lock with a permutation lock!

    Judah Lesser

  • Why did the mutually exclusive events break up?

    They had nothing in common.

  • Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits and coughs and starts and random collisions.

    Lauren Oliver (1982 - )

  • May the odds be ever in your favor!

    Suzanne Collins (1962 - )

  • How do coaches stay even-keeled at the start of a season?

    They begin with a uniform distribution!

    Larry Lesser

  • Why did the statistics student download the chapter on continuous distributions from her eBook instead of just reading it on the class website?

    Because for that chapter, her teacher said to use the pdf!

    Judah Lesser

  • by Peter Sprangers

    Come with me and we shall go
    a place that only n has known

    a kingdom distant and sublime
    whose ruler is the greatest prime

    a land where infinite sums can rest
    and undergrads shall take no test

    a place where every child you see
    writes poems about the C.L.T.

    where cdf's converge to one
    and every day is filled with sun.

    where we can jump time's famous hurdle
    and watch Achilles beat the turtle

    and every stat plucked from a tree
    is, without proof, U.M.V.U.E.

    where joy o'erflows the cornucopia
    in this, the land of Asymptopia.

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