Statistical Romance | A stats homework fic
They'd met on the first day of Stats 141. Pat had been armed with his calculator and textbook, Leslie with a sheaf of paper tables. It had been an instant connection; no one else could love the class as they did and calculations became even more invigorating with two.
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He asked her out half-way through their first class of Management Science 312.
"My graph requires an intersection."
"Why don't we discuss the probabilities over pizza?"
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Their dates usually involve a library, their textbooks, and a calculator. One day, Leslie suggests a movie (she'd been convinced by her friends that dating didn't count, otherwise). They go to a flick about corporate fraud and spend the entire time criticizing the statistician's methods - it's the best movie either of them has ever seen.
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They each have their problems - who doesn't? Pat uses unreliable variables in his calculations; Leslie is too quick to draw conclusions about the hypotheses. They try to ignore the other's faults but it's so difficult when the problem results in a skewed distribution.
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The break-up occurs the week before exams, and it's because of a girl.
"I'm tutoring!" Pat protests, "She needed a second opinion on her curve!"
Leslie is too jealous to think rationally: "Your p-value is too small for me to reject the null - I think it's time for a test of independence!"
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"That's how you deal with everything, Pat - you hole up and pretend it doesn't exist, you ignore critical values and then complain when your alpha comes out wrong - but you know what? I think you need to sit back and take a look at the common variables between all your problems because the only constant value I'm seeing here is you."
"But Leslie," Pat counters, folding his hands on the table, "Correlation doesn't imply causation!"
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When they first turned up in the therapist's office, Pat and Leslie were a muddled mess of unrelated data points and rejected hypotheses. Now, finally, they are beginning to eliminate the inconsequential variables; now, they are rediscovering their correlation; now, they are learning to calculate a regression at last.
There might be a line of best fit in there somewhere, after all.
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She wavers between a major in dance versus English, statistics never once crossing her mind.
"A statistical anomaly," Pat bemoans, "She doesn't fit the sample set!"
Leslie, in typical fashion, attempts to change her daughter's mind by throwing a series of complicated statistic problems at her before giving in and calculating the average employment rate of dance majors, instead.
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End.
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Author's Note: This was written based on the two consultants in the Mgtsc 312 HW8. Before analyzing the data itself, I took a look at the two consultants hired and came to the conclusion that the reason they had given such opposing recommendations was because they had just broken up and were in need of couples' therapy. Thanks to Jay for the conversation that inspired this (it was Jay who wrote the third-last vignette, as well). I now wholeheartedly ship Pat/Leslie.
Also, just a point of interest to me, but probably not anyone else - each scene is written in exactly three sentences. And now you know.
Hope you enjoy and good luck to everyone in the course on this homework assignment!