MOM'S SECRET ROOM

[ONEBGG]

An elderly statistician complained to a younger statistician one day that he was having a "senior moment" when he forgot what integrating the normal probability density function produced. The younger statistician said not to worry because all he had to do was to set "junior moment" on his moment generating function and it would spit out "area under the curve." The elderly statistician stared vacantly for a few seconds then confessed that his moment generating function had no such setting and suggested that the younger statistician may have also just had a "senior moment"!
* This little exchange I wrote is dedicated to Professor Robert V. Hogg of the Statistics Department at the University of Iowa who taught me all about moment generating functions. Professor Hogg was an outstanding instructor and his upbeat attitude and interjection of fun into his lectures first gave me the notion that just maybe statistics did not have to be dry and humorless.