Barney The Dinosaur Gives Wake-Up Call To Statisticians

MINNEAPOLIS-- Barney the purple dinosaur spoke to the Association of American Criminal Statisticians last week about the need to "get tough" with the numbers.

Barney gets a chuckle from the assembled statisticians.

An avid amateur statistician himself, Barney relied on his gentle humour to prod the professionals with a wake-up call for a "new professionalism."

"I see a lot of slack graphs out there," Barney said. "They look a bit like my gut: soft and porous. Come on guys, let's take a good hard look at those formulas!"

Barney then sang a song about three bunnies. "What's my percentile, If I'm a white gentile," were two lines from the chorus.

"I thought he delivered his message, and it was a tough message, well," said Mr. Tom Viu, a member of the association. "He basically told us we were dragging our butts and not being as rigourous as we should be in the analysis and presentation of data. It was sobering. I feel re-invigorated and re-committed to the numbers, and to loving the people I work with, whatever their colour and mental capacity."

Mr. Edwin C. Jung, a member for 14 years, felt chastened as well. "I guess we all fall into ruts," he said. "I know I have been guilty of using the pie graph quite heavily, especially pulling pieces out for emphasis. Barney has set me straight. I'm going to be more diligent about choosing the appropriate means of illustrating the meaning of the numbers. That may mean cluster graphs, line graphs, or maybe even just a plain chart. I feel validated and important by Barney's message."

Barney said he felt pleased with the speech. "These guys are great," he said, "once we all saw together that there were problems with interpreting the data I felt I could be open enough to say I loved them. And I do, I really do."

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