Comment on Statistics in a nutshell
thefartographer@lemm.ee 6 months ago
A mathematician, physicist, and statistician all go hunting when they come across a deer. The mathematician first calculates for the mass of the round, the muzzle velocity, and drop rate then says “ok, give me the rifle.” He fires and misses by 3 feet to the left. “Miss!” exclaims the statistician.
The physicist takes the rifle and says, “you forgot to calculate for wind velocity!” He does some more calculations between 3 spheres and then says that he’s ready. He fires the rifle and misses by 3 feet to the right.
“We got him!” the statistician excitedly yells as the deer goes running off into the woods.
God_Is_Love@reddthat.com 6 months ago
I wanna get this so bad but I don’t and I want to be socially accepted by peers so I won’t ask for an explanation
Pelicanen@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
The mathematician misses three feet to the left and the physicist misses three feet to the right. If you take the average of those two, like in statistics, it’s right in the middle and would hit the deer.
angrymouse@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Just in case, statistics have a lot of mechanisms just to avoid these average issues affecting your analysis, this is situation is much more “how to lie with numbers”. And yeah, ppl don’t like me.
God_Is_Love@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Thank you, you rock 😆
thefartographer@lemm.ee 6 months ago
In simplest terms, statisticians are stereotypically known for wanting to simplify curves. So, if you see a plot graph of data and notice a cloud of points that appear to angle in a certain direction, statisticians will sometimes draw a line from the first average point to the last average point and say that line represents the data. So the joke is that statisticians throw out the individual data and say the average represents the real world, so three left and three right equals and average of a direct hit.
For the physicist, they’re known for representing everything as spheres to simplify their math and create approximate calculations. This means that back-of-the-envelope calculations will get you close but won’t be precise.
Mathematicians are said to only calculate for one variable at a time, in this case, trajectory without accounting for wind or air resistance. Mathematicians also often joke about using “dots in space.”
The overall joke is that these are three incredibly intelligent people abusing the most boiled down versions of their fields and failing terribly because they refuse to experience the world in anything other than numbers and figures.
I hope you are now able to enjoy the joke more, although I imagine it’s now more tedious than enjoyable.
God_Is_Love@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Wow no joke it was super nice of you to explain that to me 🤣 I’m still don’t follow 100% (my brain isn’t well suited for math) but I do find it funnier understanding it more!!