How to Hope with Statistics

Abstract

After I did this in Victoria, a Swedish statistician, Andrejs Dunkels, who is a cartoonist, drew these two little characters. One asked, What's the name of Bob Hogg's next book? The other replied, How to With Of course, the Hope in the cartoon referred to Bob Hope. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Dunkels might be onto something: With Statistics. There really is hope with statistics. I would like to discuss this tonight. In the last two or three years, I have flown in and out of Washington's National Airport several times, really more than I would have like. But there is one flight pattern I particularly enjoy-taking off to the west and seeing the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the White House, and the Lincoln Memorial on the right. It's a thrill for any American. The Capitol and monuments of Washington are symbols of America's hopes and its promises. But as I travel around this country in my duties as ASA president, I often feel those promises are not being kept. This April, for example, Carolyn and I drove through the South when we visited a few chapters in South Carolina and Georgia. The timing was perfect as the azaleas and dogwood were at their peak. We drove back through Tennessee and Ken-