Statistical Poetry & Songs
The Chinese National Bureau of Statistics asked its employees to craft poems to celebrate an anniversary [via Reuters Blogs]. Particularly liked these lines by Yu Jiao:
In the Sea of Numbers
No beautiful languages
But endless calls day after day
No flowers or applause
But doubts and suspicion from others
No melting sceneries
But a bunch of dry numbers flowing
…
Statistical Poetry can be amusing and fun, yet thoughtful. I recall the feeling of joy I got at listening Michael Greenacre’s Summertime (mp3):
Summertime
It’s summertime,
Statistical modelling is easy,
Data are fitting,
Explained variance is high.Your data are rich,
And your model’s good-looking,
So hush, statisticians, don’t you cry
With a little google search it’s easy to discover that there’s a good tradition of Statistical Songs. Take, for example, Brad Carlin’s, Mark Glickman’s and Johannes Schult’s compositions and parodies. Some of these songs convey messages as well, such as the faith of their composers in a particular theory. Come take a taste of the Bayesian Believer:
Bayesian Believer
(The Monkees – I’m a Believer)I thought inference was just a fairy tale,
Confused by stats and probability,
Frequentist approaches (doo-doot doo-doot)
made no sense to me (doo-doot doo-doot)
Summarizing evidence by p!Then I saw Tom Bayes — Now I’m a believer,
Without a trace — of doubt in my mind,[I'm a] Bayesian (ooooh) — Oh, I’m a believer –
I couldn’t p now if I tried!
…
