oh, the irony!

[indigo_rose99]

You get the part about me being a statistician, right?  One of my occasional job duties is to teach a class on surveys. 

So I start teaching a regular statistics class yesterday and we get to the part where I am introducing the Greek letters for mean and standard deviation.  So I go off on a  sample vs population tangent with the Census as the focus.  And they pop up with... "That would be tomorrow!"  As in, once every four years or so, Australia does a census.  Hand delivered.  Hand picked up.  Everyone does it.  Even visitors.  Even people staying in hotels.  And it is today.

*jaw gaping goggle*

Yes, this would be completely different from the US census.  Ours is once every 10 years, it is mailed out, and mailed back.   We have too many people to even consider such a frequent census, and with such human interaction in the delivery and pickup.  And I'm pretty sure that we do not make visitors fill it out.   And most of ours are really short.  The last one I filled out took me 5 minutes.

And so, I just spend 45 minutes in my hotel room... filling out 55-question census form.  Seriously.  It just makes me laugh.  I wish I could get a photocopy.  Putting down my occupation as "STATISTICIAN" was the best part. *snicker* 

The final line of the form was a signature to thank me for my hard work.  It was signed "Australian Statistician."  I wonder if this means that they have only one?  *snicker*

Comments

[thebroomecloset.livejournal.com]

I wish I could get a photocopy.

Do you have a camera or your cameraphone with you? You could take some pictures of it for your later viewing amusement.

[tiger-stripes.livejournal.com]

And ours :-)

You got your census form in the mail?

[sclatter.livejournal.com]

I definitely had someone come to my door. Two someones, in fact; it was quite amusing. There was an older woman, probably Chinese, and a tween-aged girl with her. Might have been her granddaughter, *possibly* daughter. I asked them in, as it seemed weird to make them stand on the doorstep while I filled out the form, but they were very surprised when I did. The woman, who I assume was supposed to be the official census-taker, spoke little to no English. The girl actually administered the form.

The funny thing was that they were both *completely* fascinated by my cat, Turtle. You remember Turtle? They wanted to know what she was. Like, didn't recognize her as a cat. They were just enraptured with her. It was so odd!

[thebroomecloset.livejournal.com]

I heard a piece on NPR this afternoon during my commute home about the US Census Bureau changing its methods from once-a-decade to annually. It made me think of you and this post of yours. You can find the story on NPR's web site.