A moderately amusing statistical anecdote

I usually draft what I write in Word, because it is what I am used to & because it gives me the nearest I can get to a nice blank page of A4, which is what I was used to writing on for most of my life. Somehow the words flow better & I can judge how it ‘looks’ – even though it will look completely different when it gets transformed into Blogger or Google Reader or ….

Just as manuscript used to when it got typed out – goodness, imagine that somebody else had to do your typing for you!

And then different again when (if) it got into print – astonishing how such a great pile of typescript shrinks to such a slender volume

I tend to make use of Word’s autocorrect because I am such a rotten typist. It is worth the chore of having to say, sometimes, Stop it! Undo Automatic Capitalization! (which is especially likely if I have been typing out verse by one of our more modern poets)

I did not realise until last night that this kind service extended to the Greek alphabet, though I suppose it is only logical

I had been writing about something vaguely statistical & needed a σ, something I also know how to do in Word

I spotted, only just in time, that Word had kindly changed my σ into a Σ



Speaking of which, I am ashamed to confess how old I was when I realised that ∫ is simply the old extended S, the one that gives rise to so many jokes when pronounced as an f instead

Link

Some Anecdotes and Analogies for Illustrating Statistical Ideas