THE IWSM 2007 SPECIAL SONGS

Gurdeep Stephens and Michael Greenacre

For the opening ceremony, Gurdeep Stephens and Michael Greenacre performed the

Catalan folk song El Cant dels Ocells (The Song of the Birds) and then a medley of

songs, by Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, with alternative lyrics written by Michael

Greenacre.  Listen to these songs by clicking on the titles below.

It don’t mean a thing (if you don’t do modelling!)

It don’t mean a thing if you don’t do modelling,

Doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah

(repeat)

It don’t matter if you’re frequentist or Bayesian,

You just need a model with some alphas and betas, x’s and y’s, and i’s and j’s and k’s in

So it don’t mean a thing if you don’t do modelling

Doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah-doo-wah

(repeat)

The model I love

Some day it'll come along

The model I love,

It'll be robust and strong

The model I love,

And when it comes my way

I'll put it on my resumé!

Of all the models out there,

Is there one for me?

I’ll give it all my love and care,

Mathematically,

And then – finally,

I’ll get my PhD

Maybe I'll do estimation

Using likelihood, or least-squares,

Or with some approximation,

Or just eyeballin',

That's the job we're all in.

To get some publications,

I'll write papers, at least two,

For my job applications,

I think that'll do, don't you?

So hear me, Lord above, I’m waiting for that model I love,

I’m waiting for the model I love.

It ain’t necessarily so

It ain't necessarily so

It ain't necessarily so

That for models to be formal

Data have to be normal

But it ain't necessarily so

My data had values real skew,

Relationships nonlinear too,

But with spline-approximation

Or Box-Cox-transformation

My data are more normal than you.

Now it ain't necessarily so

That your deviance has to be low,

Use less parameters, (pronounce: paramee-ters)

Less alphas and betas,

Then apply Akaike,

Although it sounds freaky,

And less will be more as you know...

It ain't necessarily so

It ain't necessarily so

That for models to be formal

Data have to be normal

But it ain't necessarily so.

It ain’t necessarily – It ain’t necessarily

It ain’t necessarily – It ain’t necessarily

It ain’t necessarily – It ain’t necessarily

It ain’t necessarily SO!

Summertime

It's summertime,

Statistical modelling is easy,

Data are fitting,

Explained variance is high.

Your data are rich,

And your model's good-looking,

So hush, statisticians, don't you cry