You can crush us, you can bruise us, yes, even shoot us, but oh—not a pie chart!

Byron Gajewski pointed me to this several-years-old article from the Onion, which begins:

According to a groundbreaking new study published Monday in The Journal Of The American Statistical Association, somewhere on the planet someone is totally doing it at this very moment.

“Of the 6.7 billion inhabitants of Earth, approximately 3.5 billion have reached sexual maturity,” said Dr. Jerome Carver, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. “From a statistical perspective, it simply stands to reason that at least two of these inhabitants are totally going at it right now. Like, as we speak.”

“But it’s probably way more than that,” Carver added. “Like at least a hundred.”

The multidiscipline study, which tapped leading experts in several fields, including reproduction and population sciences, found overwhelming evidence that there is never even a second when someone is not doing it.

An analysis of the data, based on a new statistical model referred to as “Rauchembauer’s Overlap,” indicates that, given the sheer number of people in the world, by the time the first set of people is done doing it, someone else has already begun getting it on.

In addition, the findings suggest that there is a “good, to very good” chance that someone is doing it close by.

“The nearer you get to major metropolitan areas, the more likely you are to be in proximity to those making it,” said California Institute of Technology probability theorist Howard Bergsson, who contributed to the report. “For example, we’re in Chicago, a city of three million people. Someone is probably doing it right down the street, or maybe even somewhere in this building.”

Very well, done, but . . . (a) please don’t lead a stats story with a quote from a math professor, and (b) was this really necessary:

Area newspaper mocks statistics, indeed.

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