The Fairly Intelligent Fly

A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies. Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and quiet place in which to rest.

One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said, 'Come on down.' But the fly was too clever for him and said, 'I never light where I don't see other flies and I don't see any other flies in your house.' So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other flies. He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said, 'Hold it, stupid, that's flypaper. All those flies are trapped.' 'Don't be silly,' said the fly, 'they're dancing.' So he settled down and became stuck to the flypaper with all the other flies.

Moral: There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

That is from the opening page, originally written by the humorous writer James Thurber about misuse of statistical numbers.

Then still another funny quote, after the preface of the book "Data Analysis for Politics and Policy" pictured below. (Which is also a clickable link to our website.)

One of our more interesting statistics books, with enough math to make it a serious study book, but enough colorful anecdotes and analysis of everyday situations to make it of some interest to even a casual observer, though it appears to be aimed, to a certain extent to those with a mathematical bent.

The following sentence is probably an old saw, but we have not heard it in may years if it is an old joke,  and is probably applicable to many areas of formal study, but we can't but help quoting it from the first page of chapter 1 which introduces the basic concepts with the following aphorism:

Unfortunately, some studies, in the words of one critic, "Use statistics as a drunk uses a street lamp, for support rather than illumination."