Friday, June 24, 2011

Some creative title should probably go here

So I get this email at work the other day from a listserv for SAS users at Census. They've formed a group and were trying to come up with the name of the group, which they did by polling the people who were attending the inaugural meetings. These were the results:

censas

There are a couple of things that should stand out to anyone who’s ever read a graph:  The first is that 55 people participated in this poll. The second, and infinitely more important, is that approximately 2% of those polled voted for "Other" (see top bar). Well, being the inquisitive mathematical statistician that I am, it didn't take too long to realize that 2% of 55 people is, wait for it (and yes—I pulled out “wait for it”).... 1 person.

Yes, readers, the author of this presentation felt the need to include this single vote under "Other", but not specify what "Other" actually referred to.  This, of course, leads me to wildly speculate about the rationale for not revealing the suggestion of this one poor voter.  I have come up with the following reasons, ordered by how likely I find them:

1.) This was intended as a joke by the author to see if anyone was paying attention at the meeting.  I couldn’t attend the meeting, so status: unknown.

2.) The name suggested under “Other” was too inappropriate (or perhaps even embarrassing) to be included on a workplace presentation.  I find this less likely given that the winning entry is technically pronounced “SensASS”.  Like you’re trying to pronounce census but, instead of the “us” sound, you go with “ass”.  Clearly, I felt this was an inferior name.  Full disclosure: My vote was for CSUG.  My second vote would have been a write-in for “People Who Work At The U.S. Census Bureau, Use SAS On A Regular Basis, And Would Like Additional Resources, Hour-Long Meetings, Or Both”.  It was actually my first choice, but it didn’t fit on the ballot. 

3.) Somebody stole my original idea and was able to fit the entire name on one ballot.  Author took artistic liberty and decided against including the full name, or even the unwieldy acronym (PWWATUSCBUSOARBAWLARHLMOB).

4.) The 1 holdout vote actually wanted the name of the new group to be Other.  Obviously, this would be the longshot.


Assuming that the real reason is probably something far less interesting than the ideas I’ve presented here, I guess it really is sometimes better to not know the whole story.

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