What is your favorite “data analysis” cartoon?

This is one of my favorites:

One entry per answer. (This is in the vein of the Stack Overflow question What’s your favorite “programmer” cartoon?.)

• @sharpie: are jokes out? We obviously don't want the entire site to be humor, but everyone benefits from a little educational humor in small doses. – Shane Jul 22 '10 at 5:15
• @Sharpie, feel free to close or reopen according to your feelings! I agree with Shane, a bit is ok, but not too much. For example, this question already included a funny cartoon. The jokes question not really a funny joke.... – Peter Smit Jul 22 '10 at 13:58
• These cartoons are useful too; they can be included in a lecture on a particular topic where you are trying to explain a concept (e.g. correlation/causation above). A little humor can help to keep an audience engaged. – Shane Jul 22 '10 at 14:22
• According to the tour, this question should be closed, since it is a question that has "too many possible answers" and since it is "primarily opinion-based". I'm not complaining, just surprised it has stayed open for this long. – Flimm Dec 9 '14 at 10:29
• Data Science analogy to cartoon in OP. Data Scientist: I went to data science bootcamp and learned how to find correlations in big data. Those insights can be converted into big money. Statistician: But many of those correlations are spurious. Correlation does not imply causation. Data Scientist: Don't give me none of that century old statistics mumbo-jumbo. This is big data. That means the data has everything. So by definition, all relationships in the data are correct. I ring the cash register while you snooze and lose, grandpa. – Mark L. Stone Dec 19 '15 at 22:42

Was XKCD, so time for Dilbert:

• Did anyone else notice that the tour guide changes colors between the second and third frames? – Max Aug 22 '12 at 20:41
• On RANDU: "We guarantee that each number is random individually, but we don't guarantee that more than one of them is random." – Iain Samuel McLean Elder Mar 18 '14 at 15:11
• Link not working, was it this one dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25 ? – Tim Jan 27 '15 at 19:27

Another from XKCD:

Mentioned here and here.

• You can't read this one without the alt text. it said something like "But because of that we're totally breaking up" – generic_user Mar 10 '14 at 18:16

My favourite Dilbert cartoon:

• Definitively my favorite cartoon about Data Mining – steffen Dec 1 '10 at 12:24
• Link not working. Was it this one: dilbert.com/strip/2008-05-07 ? – Tim Jan 27 '15 at 19:27

One more Dilbert cartoon:

...

• This one reminds me of the recent bailout in the States, where they just made up 700 billion number - they said they just wanted a really large number. :) – Roman Luštrik Aug 12 '10 at 8:53
• Fixed. I had to add some dots after the cartoon since SE didn't allow me to submit the changes :-\ – Ching Chong Feb 5 '15 at 11:30

One of my favorites from xckd:

Random Number

RFC 1149.5 specifies 4 as the standard IEEE-vetted random number.

• Now this is hilarious. – StatsStudent Mar 7 '16 at 18:35
• But that isn't even prime! – kjetil b halvorsen Jan 25 '17 at 15:27

From: A visual comparison of normal and paranormal distributions Matthew Freeman J Epidemiol Community Health 2006;60:6. Lower caption says 'Paranormal Distribution' - no idea why the graphical artifact is occuring.

• I think this version of the joke works better (from oneweirdkerneltrick.com), though apparently this version was seven years earlier. – Dougal Feb 3 '15 at 1:06
• this isn't really funny. it's more of a twist on english terms – user46925 Mar 7 '16 at 18:20
• @zero "A twist on English terms" describes a great many jokes – Fomite Mar 7 '16 at 18:22
• Yeah - I think all those jokes suck. There is no underlying statistical humour. This joke should be put on the English stackexchange instead. – user46925 Mar 7 '16 at 18:23
• @Phil: In the 2-dimensional version linked by Dougal, the "paranormal distribution" is indeed a (bizarrely truncated) distribution; so the joke has some statistical content. It doesn't work in one dimension, where your comment certainly applies. – John Bentin Jun 19 '16 at 17:47

'So, uh, we did the green study again and got no link. It was probably a--' 'RESEARCH CONFLICTED ON GREEN JELLY BEAN/ACNE LINK; MORE STUDY RECOMMENDED!'

xkcd: significant

• This is by far my favorite cartoon of all time. It's super educational. It really gets to the heart of the definition of a p-value. In fact, I bet that less than 10% the students who pass a college freshman "intro to stats" class get this joke, and this makes me sad. – WetlabStudent Jan 15 '14 at 3:36
• Maybe so! Fortunately for freshmen, @Glen_b has offered an excellent breakdown here. – Nick Stauner Feb 27 '14 at 1:03
• Great! But yellow appears twice :P – Rodrigo Mar 1 '16 at 0:51
• this is a pretty good joke as it clearly demonstrates why repeated multiple testing is dangerous. For anyone interested check out Bonferi correction to deal with this. – user46925 Mar 7 '16 at 18:21

I just came across this and loved it:

• That's great. The standard way of dealing with outliers. – Shane Jul 26 '10 at 20:06
• Who's the artist? – blubb Sep 25 '14 at 16:01
• This cartoon was drawn by Ben Shabad – ff524 Jan 7 '16 at 20:20

Another from xkcd #833:

And if you labeled your axes, I could tell you exactly how MUCH better.

By the third trimester, there will be hundreds of babies inside you.

Also from XKCD

This isn't technically a cartoon, but close enough:

• That's definitely my favorite. I always have to stop on this and laugh when scrolling over this page. It's just so bad!! – Henrik Sep 9 '10 at 9:02

this too:

• To be honest, those are the bad physicists. The good physicists stick around and make a name for themselves. – Iterator Aug 6 '11 at 3:17
• Yet it's amazing how often it works... – wnoise Sep 22 '11 at 4:44
• This cartoon...speaks to me. – Fomite Sep 29 '12 at 23:38

There is this one on Bayesian learning:

• What's the source? – Shane Aug 31 '10 at 15:02
• It was taken from Mike West's website: stat.duke.edu/~mw/fineart.html – ebony1 Aug 31 '10 at 16:23

Nice. The importance of variance when thinking about a population.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

• This has to be my favorite. – Pseudo_Scientist Aug 22 '14 at 21:09
• This cartoon makes me sad. – Flimm Dec 9 '14 at 10:40

And another one from xkcd.

Title: Self-Description

The mouseover text:

The contents of any one panel are dependent on the contents of every panel including itself. The graph of panel dependencies is complete and bidirectional, and each node has a loop. The mouseover text has two hundred and forty-two characters.

Another one from xkcd:

Alt-text:

Hell, my eighth grade science class managed to conclusively reject it just based on a classroom experiment. It's pretty sad to hear about million-dollar research teams who can't even manage that.

• this one is just great :-) – Curious May 12 '12 at 10:39

Here's another one from Dilbert:

• Looks like this one needs an updated image. – Nick Orlando Feb 24 '15 at 20:45

More about design and power than analysis, but I like this one

I liked this one:

This is probably fun to show in class as well...

A classic...

• "Because medical research findings can be difficult to reconcile, are not always pre-digested, and can seem overwhelming to us casual observers, let us make fun of those who dedicate their lives to obtaining them." – rolando2 Feb 9 '14 at 0:53
• @rolando2 As a medical researcher, I find the sensationalist incompetence of mainstream science reporters hilarious. – Superbest Feb 26 '14 at 12:08
• There's a listserv from HealthNewsReview devoted to evaluating media handling of health research findings. – rolando2 Mar 9 '15 at 14:14
• As a statistician, I find the sensationalist incompetence of mainstream "data analysts" hilarious. – StatsStudent Mar 7 '16 at 21:35

I found this from a NoSQL presentation, but the cartoon can be found directly at

http://browsertoolkit.com/fault-tolerance.png

• Can you please explain this cartoon? – Christian Sep 3 '14 at 0:00
• yeah but.... this one isn't true... it mostly depends on how you parameterize the time variable $t$... i guess if you go back far enough, but come on... – William Sep 22 '11 at 17:24

Found this one in the comments on Andrew Gelman's blog.

• This chart is wrong, correct percentage is about fifty-fifty. – juliohm Mar 10 '14 at 16:09

Source: unknown. Posted on flowingdata.com.

• There could be a secondary y-axis labeled "Ballerina chicken with cloaca". – Waldir Leoncio Jan 31 at 9:38

Allright, I think this one is hilarious- but let's see if it passes the Statistical Analysis Miller test.

Fermirotica

I love how Google handles dimensional analysis. Stats are ballpark and vary wildly by time of day and whether your mom is in town.

• Statistical voyeurism? And there we were wondering what to call the site... – walkytalky Jul 23 '10 at 15:48

From xkcd:

This is data analysis in the form of a cartoon, and I find it particularly poignant.

The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.

• Very funny! (____) – Tal Galili Aug 5 '11 at 19:51

Another one from xkcd:

• Bananas are always tasty. – Anonymous Type Dec 1 '10 at 4:00
• @AnonymousType and easy! – tdc Feb 23 '12 at 13:07
• Where are persimmons? – EngrStudent May 18 '13 at 3:18
• @EngrStudent: they're simultaneously off both ends of the tasty scale. – naught101 Aug 21 '13 at 1:35
• I'm surprised Durian isn't on here... – Frank H. Oct 20 '15 at 17:41

protected by Community♦Oct 7 '16 at 1:31

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