Statistics

I somehow appear to have landed in a statistics course. As someone with a degree in Electrical Engineering, the learning value being imparted is minimal. So much so, I'm half regretting not taking the exemption exam. But then it's good to have an easy course as a buffer for when the work kicks in in all the other courses. And anyway, had I exempted the only thing I could have done instead was a course on Business Ethics, which in my mind is simply a box ticking exercise for the school, lest one of us glorious MBAs pulls an Enron at some stage in their career.

The Statistics professor, however, is a an absollute joy to watch. He's one of these passionately passionate Italians with a thick Italian accent and makes use of large voice amplitude variations to command your attention 100% of the time. I am informed by a large proportion of the female audience that he is simply to die for.

Today we watched the most delightful little clip about sampling. It was one of these 1970s cheesy education clips done in America. It starts with a boardroom meeting of a corporation thinking whether or not to launch the X5000 razor (which ironically is a 5 bladed razor). And all of a sudden this dashingly handsome statistician dives in and convinces everyone it would be a folly to do so, but only after getting his bit in about the Central Limit theorem and customer surveys. The last scene involves him quietly walking out and driving away in his yellow Ferrari, while everyone in the boardroom is left saying "Wow. Who was that guy" and staring longingly into the distance. Just great.