How art helps to understand statistics

Issue title: Teaching Statistics

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Lipovetsky, Stan^a | Mandel, Igor^{b; *}

Affiliations: [a] GfK Custom Research North America, Minneapolis, MN, USA | [b] Telmar Inc., New York, NY, USA

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. E-mail: stan.lipovetsky@gfk.com.

Abstract: This article demonstrates that art may inspire statistical thinking in many ways, providing aesthetic pleasure, scientific enlightenment, and humorous excitement. Art can serve as a fine tool for educational purposes in statistics, presenting explicit illustrations of statistical concepts. The role of statisticians here is to find a hidden meaning of a masterpiece and to interpret it for students. This work gives some examples of such an interpretation of painting from a statistical perspective.

Keywords: Art, statistics, humor

DOI: 10.3233/MAS-2009-0135

Journal: Model Assisted Statistics and Applications, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 313-324, 2009