Poetry about statistics
On Twitter, Evelyn Lamb pointed me to the poem “A contribution to Statistics”, by Wisława Szymborska (who won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature). It begins
Out of every hundred people
those who always know better:
— fifty-two,doubting every step
— nearly all the rest,glad to lend a hand
if it doesn’t take too long:
— as high as forty-nine,
The same blog, “Poetry with Mathematics”, has some other statistically themed poems:
- The Beauty of the Curve Kathleen Flenniken
- Tuberculosis in Numbers M. Brett Gaffney
- After Math Mary Alexandra Agner
The last was written in honour of Florence Nightingale, who was the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society, and also an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Thank you for mentioning my poem!
My current science-themed project is up at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sciencenewsinverse
10 years ago
It can go the other way too! Markov tried to model the heartwrenching plot twists of Russian romantic poems!
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/first-links-in-the-markov-chain
10 years ago