214.171.124 06:38, 30 March 2014 (UTC)
I predict that the "Teacher's t-distribution" is the new Cow Tools, and those with actual skill in statistics will drive themselves crazy over it. See  for clarification. 126.96.36.199 21:23, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
Could it be pointed out that the middle of the Teacher's distribution resembles the Tower of Mordor ? Underscoring the role of the Teacher... 188.8.131.52 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
The explain says that the student distribution works when both the sample and the population have the same variance. Isn't that wrong--doesn't the sample tend to have a larger variance than the population under usual/ideal conditions? (I'm assuming the student distribution is meant for usual/ideal conditions.) Sciepsilon (talk) 00:44, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
- I believe the true variance of a sample should be the same as the true variance of the population. Perhaps you are thinking of Bessel's correction - using "n-1" in the denominator of the formula for estimating sample variance, instead of "n". If so: While it's true that Bessel's correction makes our estimate of the sample variance larger than if we'd used "n", the reason is that using "n" would have created an estimate that was too small - or, otherwise put, biased toward zero. (The Wikipedia article on Bessel's correction has the best explanation I've seen for why this is true - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessel's_correction#The_source_of_the_bias.) What's key here is that Bessel's correction is a technique to correct our estimates of variance - the true variance of a sample is really the same as in the population. Amoorthy (talk) 16:20, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
My initial take is that in comic the students' understanding of the correct distribution is being evaluated as a function of the teacher's ability. That a poorly educated student reflects the ability of the teacherExternalMonolog (talk) 12:20, 27 March 2014 (UTC)ExternalMonolog
- This is exactly what I read. I think people are going all sorts of ways with calculating the T distribution. Clearly you need to just look at the graph and say, "looks like we're saying the data matches to the teacher skill set much more than the presumed result set." Joke over. Move on folks. -- Sean timmons (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Is it just me or the Teacher's T-curve looks like Barad-dur to anyone else..? 184.108.40.206 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
I teach college courses, and find that exam scores typically do not fit a t distribution, or any symmetrical distrubution. They more often show several groups, or what statisticians call "modes." This is a source of frustration for a lot of teachers. I saw this comic as showing how far from "normal" a real teacher's distribution is. It seems to be two superimposed periodic functions instead of a distribution. Or Barad-dur.--Spencer9 (talk) 17:40, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
When this comic came out, it put me in mind of this article:
In which it is shown that the indian university entrance scores do not follow a nice smooth distribution, but instead something with spikes at certain key values like the minimum pass mark. 220.127.116.11 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)