the following are items on a survey I found in a textbook chapter on factor analysis. the survey, apparently, was based on a theory that predicts good research methods lecturers from four traits: (a) a profound love of statistics; (b) an enthusiasm for experimental design; (c) a love of teaching; and (d) a total absence of normal interpersonal skills.


some of the items...


- I once woke up in the middle of a vegetable patch hugging a turnip that I'd mistakenly dug up thinking it was Roy's largest root
- I memorize probability values for the F distribution
- I worship at the shrine of Pearson
- I still live with my mother and have little personal hygiene
- I soil my pants in excitement at the mere mention of factor analysis
- I calculate 3 ANOVAs in my head before getting out of bed every morning
- Standing in front of 300 people in no way makes me lose control of my bowels
- I love teaching because students have to pretend to like me or they'll get bad marks
- I'd rather think about appropriate dependent variables than go to the pub
- I tried to build myself a time machine so that I could go back to the 1930s and follow Fisher around on my hands and knees licking the floor on which he'd just trodden


I thought this list was hysterically funny, and that concerns me a bit, because I don't believe laughing at jokes about multivariate statistics is a healthy thing to do.


descent into madness: proceeding as planned.