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    Serious Statisticians Funny Statistics
    Serious Statisticians Funny Statistics
    Serious Statisticians Funny Statistics
    Ebook171 pages2 hours

    Serious Statisticians Funny Statistics

    By Hiranya Borah

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    About this ebook

    All the articles presented in this book are already in my Face Book posts. These are published in my own posts at different time.These articles do not carry any new theorems of statistics nor give any new additions to the statistical works already available in public domain. These articles are presented in a different perspective for easily understandable language. Readers from non statistical background may read this book as a story book and statisticians may have an idea of official statistics. Stories and sub-stories written in this book are mostly based on personal experiences of life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHiranya Borah
    Release dateJun 2, 2015
    ISBN9781310349362
    Serious Statisticians Funny Statistics
    Author

    Hiranya Borah

    Born in a teachers' family in a village of Assam, a province of India, Borah started his journey of writing at a tender age of eleven. He published two novels in Assamese language and other fictional and non-fictional stories in Assamese periodicals during his college days. Then Borah almost stopped his literary activity for more than three decades. In the meantime he became a Gender specialist.However,so far, he has published more than one hundred and sixty five books on this platform in English and one book in Hindi within a span of five years. The books are on different topics like inspiration,romance and love, humour, ghosts, suspense thriller, children etc and those are written both in prose and poetry.Eight English and two Assamese books are also available in printed form. 2nd edition of his first book, 'Random Thoughts' is also in the public domain.

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      Book preview

      Serious Statisticians Funny Statistics - Hiranya Borah

      Preface

      All the articles presented in this book are already in the public domain through my Face Book posts. These articles do not carry any new theorems of statistics nor give any new additions to the statistical works already available in public domain. These articles are presented in a different perspective for easily understandable language. Readers from non statistical background may read this book as a story book and statisticians may have an idea of official statistics. Stories and sub-stories written in this book are mostly based on personal experiences of my life.

      Idea of writing statistics in the way I have written in these 25 chapters, came from a young and very charming lecturer of Manipal University, Ms. Neelima Sharma. After hearing my presentation in her university, she suggested that I may jot down statistical issues, the way I talk about statistics in a non-traditional way. I take this opportunity to thank her for giving such a beautiful idea.

      On day to day basis my inspiration for writing articles comes from my youngest daughter, Anwesha. She is also very vocal in criticising any shortfall in my writing. However, without constant encouragement from many of my friends, I could not have written a single chapter of the book. I am thankful to all my friends, particularly, Sarbashri/Shrimati A. K. Mishra, Ramanamurthy, Hazra sir, Basu sir, Unni Sir, Guha sir, Satya Narayan Sir,Tusar, Abhijit, RR Deb, Praveen, Rupali, Manikankana, Nilakshi, Sunitha, Anuja, Richa, Kajal, Nitika, Moolchand Bhaskar, Hema madam, Kulpreet, Amresh, Mukesh, all ISS officers, Officers from Directorate of Economic and Statistics, Professors from different universities and FB friends who not only read my articles but sometimes give comments also. My special thanks to my foreign friends Ms. Irani madam, Ms. Anna, Ms. Lu, Ms. Jeliang et al who dare to read some of my articles of my book, ‘Random Thoughts through a coloured prism’ and gave me few encouraging comments. I have also great appreciation for my family members, my wife (Monalisha, ultimate critique), my elder daughter (Anusuya), my son (Ayusman) and two lovely spiritual daughters (Avneet and Deepika) for their constant support and sacrifices. My elder daughter always offers financial assistance to printout my books, which gives me lot of mental support.

      I am thankful to Mr. Rajendra Prasad Srivastava and Mr. Radhakrishna Rao for designing an apt and creative cover page for my e-book.

      My special thanks are due for my Sikhnee daughter, Avneet for taking leading role in publishing this compilation as an e-book.

      By criticising and praising my posts in FB, many of my friends, directly or indirectly encouraged me to publish my e-book, for which, I shall be always thankful to them. I take the opportunity to express my gratitude to my parents, brothers, sisters, friends, foes, seniors, juniors and teachers for their support for developing my personalities, good or bad or ugly.

      Last, but not the least, I am thankful to Smashwords for publishing my articles as e-book.

      Author

      Episode-1

      Range- most underrated measure of dispersion

      Unqualified doctors and unqualified statisticians are the most common professionals in the world. Suppose today you have a headache, the moment you tell this to your friend, you will get a medical advice from your friend, who is not a doctor. Similarly, data are analysed by non statisticians and results are displayed/used with own unscientific inferences. Then, jokes will be generated on these inferences by statistically illiterate persons pretending to be experts on the field.

      Let me start with a popular joke on statistics. Number of accidents met by pedestrians in the middle of the road is much less than the number of accidents met by pedestrians on either side of the road. Therefore, conclusion is, walking through the middle of road is safer than walking by side of a road. This inference is made by statistically illiterate person, who thinks himself as an expert of the subject. A statistician will definitely conclude differently by asking a simple question - How many pedestrians walk through middle of the roads and how many walks by the side of the roads?

      I always ask a question to the young statisticians, ‘What statistical measure you will apply when you have to cross a river assuming that you do not know swimming and there is no boat/bridge is seen for use?’

      I am giving some most popular wrong answers along with the correct answer below:

      Average depth of the river (the foolish fellow will die, are you coming for his/her cremation?)

      Mode value of depth of the river (tries to be smart, but the fellow will die; you may come for his/her cremation.)

      Median value of depth of the river (again this fellow tries to be smarter, but this fellow will also die, you may send a RIP card.)

      Variance/Standard deviation of depth of the river(this fellow tries to prove that he knows some statistical measures, but this fellow will not live to tell another day to tell another story, you may come for his/her shradh ceremony.)

      I never saw a river except from a concrete bridge (What to comment!)

      I shall return back (Playing safe).

      The poor statistician will try to know the maximum depth of the river at the shallow most part of the river within the vicinity. Statistically it is called ‘Range". He will survive for another day to analyse some other data.

      One senior officer, who became the boss of a statistical unit of a Ministry, without iota of knowledge in statistical analysis commented in a meeting, ‘Statistics is a funny subject, you put one leg in fire and another in a fridge, since average temperature is fifty degree, you will be in a comfortable position.’ This may be one of the reasons, why in many occasions, planning in India fails!

      Let me tell you another joke. One Minister asked the Director of Statistics, ‘How many cows are there in Assam?’ The Director who was on a tour requested the Minister to give some time to examine the matter and consult the records in the office. But the Minister demanded an immediate answer. The poor Director, who happens to be from other stream, told his driver to count the cows on the road side and multiplied the area of Assam and immediately reported the Minister the estimated number of cows in Assam. Unfortunately the estimated number of cows in Assam exceeded total cattle population of the entire world! The Director was immediately removed from the post for misleading the Assembly. Joke ends here.

      To counter this joke, let me tell you another true story. After partition, in 1947, a group of refugees were lodged in a famous fort for security reasons. Government used to give food and cloth for the inmates inside the fort. Head count was made for the male inmates inside the fort. However, inflated figures were submitted for the ladies as due to socio-religious consideration, head count for ladies was not possible. After few months, Government was suspicious about the number of persons inside the fort and wanted to estimate the actual number of inmates inside the fort. A famous statistician was entrusted the job for estimation. He submitted his estimate within a month. After six months when, the fort was vacated and actual head count was possible, there was only a difference of three persons out of total inmates of around twenty five thousand. How he estimated the number of persons so accurately without entering the fort? He took the average daily salt consumption by a person to estimate number of persons inside the fort, as we all know; one cannot consume salt more or less than the necessary amount. So this served as an excellent proxy indicator to do a head count.

      Now, let us try to solve the problem of estimated number cows in Assam. If the statistician was able to collect three or four figures from the villagers (in survey we call them, knowledgeable persons) he could have estimated the figure with fair degree of accuracy. What are those figures?

      The cows he has counted, are they from a single village? If yes, approximately how many are missing?

      If they are from more than one village, what is the number of villages? Again, approximately, how many are missing?

      As a director of the Statistics, he was supposed to know, number of villages in Assam (around 22000 villages), urban areas of Assam (around 7.5 % ), cattle population in Assam from last livestock census . First one has to estimate the number, then validate the number with the existing figure. I am sure the figure, he would have arrived, would be within the 5% error of the actual figure.

      Episode-2:

      Is statistics is a boring subject?

      For me also it was a very boring subject till I got a very low score in my Statistics Honors paper in one of the terminal examinations in college. All along my favorite subject was History, which I studied only upto class X. But whenever possible, I study history. Therefore, I tried to integrate both the subjects to make statistics interesting for me (though I knew the statistics word originate from the word ‘state’ long back).

      I first analyse the number of standing army of Ashok, the Great, who was known for his peace missions and his endeavor for world peace, rather than his military might. However, it is recorded by some historians that even after Kalinga war, Emperor Ashok kept a standing army of six lakh which is one percent of total population of the whole Jambudweep(India). Does it imply that, his peace proposal was always accepted by most of the kings of neighboring countries of his time, not necessarily because of his peace loving attitude, but because of the standing army who could demolish any defense system of any country during his reign? History repeats itself! Even now, President Obama got a Nobel peace prize in the second year of his office because of American military might, otherwise have you heard, any head of the state of a small and weak country got a Nobel Peace prize just after assuming his/her office? So, can we have a statistical inference that, to impose peace, one emperor or a country must have a very strong military power to face any eventuality?

      Then again, I tried to relate fall of Prithwiraj Chouhan with a statistical distribution when there is always probability to defeat a winner of many battles, in his last battle. It is said, Delhi ruler had defeated Muhammad Ghori of Ghajni many times and let him off the hook, may be due to over confidence or due to humanitarian ground. But at that time, had he consulted a statistician, who knows, he would not have let Ghori off the hook in the very first time, destiny of India would have been different(my conjecture- I may be hundred percent wrong).

      Then, I was always confused with one terminology, ‘Nava-ratna(nine Gems)’ of Vikramaditya and Akbar. Why they did not appoint or found the tenth gem or why they were short of one/two gems? Was the number had been fixed by any service rule prevalent in that era? Or it was derived from the astrological point of view, ‘Nava Graha(Nine planets)’. However, these nine planets are different from the actual nine planets of our solar system.

      Again I was fascinated by two figures from Mahabharata, the greatest Indian epic, viz. eleven and seven Akshouhini soldiers of Kauravas and Pandavas respectively. In the epic, it is elaborately written, what is meant by one Akshouhini soldiers. But, my point of interest was to know why the party with eleven lost to seven Akshouhini soldiers. Then I try to relate other famous battles of historic period with Mahabharata and surprised to note that in most of the famous battles, the parties with larger army lost to the parties having less number of armies. It is not only true on Indian territories but also true for other territories of the world. Let me cite some examples: When Alexender defeated Darius, Darius had an army of two lakh soldiers and Alexender had only thirty five thousand soldiers. Similarly, Chengiz Khan defeated Chineese army having more than five times standing army that of

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