Regression by Eye

On my travels across cyberspace looking for intuitive and erudite methods to teach econometrics, I've come across "Regression by Eye". It'll throw up a scatter graph and you have to estimate the line of best fit. I'm hopeless. I struggle to get the right slope.

However I've also learnt that the Gaussian distribution (i.e "normal") was not discovered by Gauss - it's an example of Stigler's law of eponymy: "no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer". Which reminds me of my A-level Economics class, where my teacher introduced us to The Phillip's Curve by saying:

This is The Phillips Curve, and it's named after a famous economist called Mr Curve.

I find that bloody funny!

Comments

[dearieme]

Personally, I find that referring to the "defunct economist" Dr Whoever gets a laugh, though not usually a knowing one. I'm told that philosophers can get the same effect by alluding to "Mr Aristotle".