Thursday, September 21, 2006

tales of academia!, kids-and-economists-can-be-so-cruel edition

regression to the mean
(regression to the mean, as depicted in a slide from one of the lectures from the methods course I taught at Wisconsin)

Recently someone told me a story about the child of a very highly regarded economist who also went into economics and got a job at a prestigious department. Members of the department came to regard the son as an intellectual apple that had managed to fall far from his father's tree. His colleagues eventually came to start referring him behind his back as "Mr. Regression Beyond The Mean."

Actually, I guess I'm imputing the behind his back part; it wasn't explicitly said by the person telling the story. So it could have been to his face, for all I know. These are economists, after all.

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