A little while ago Oscar was invited to be a keynote speaker at a commercial conference: ‘Managing Uncertainty’. He shared the stage with a statistician and the conference chairman. The statistician was on first. He droned on and on about Risk being all about distributions and expectations. The business audience found it inspiring stuff! Within five minutes eyes began to glaze over. After ten he was talking to an audience of one: Oscar. Oscar was on the stage, and so he had to listen to the rubbish.
But then, Oscar was expecting this. He always says that a statistician is someone who wants to work with numbers, but doesn’t have the personality to be an accountant. Statisticians think the average human being has one tit and one testicle.
Finally the man finished, and it was Oscar’s turn. He walked slowly over to the podium, and just stood there, … and stood there, … and stood there. For a whole minute he just stood there. He fidgeted, and shot frantic and terrified glances at the audience. At first there was silence, then a few murmurs, then a growing rumble of concern. The chairman rose to help, and was half way across the stage when Oscar banged his paw on the table. In a firm voice he announced: “now that’s uncertainty, it has nothing to do with statistics.”