My undergraduate sports class is wrapping up and it has been one of the best group of students I have had in almost 15 years of teaching. They are bright, energetic and intuitive. I have a renewed hope for the undergraduate corps, at least at my institution.

Given the events surrounding one professional golfer, I held an informal poll in my class this morning.

"Who has heard of Tiger-gate?" 30 of 30 or 100% of those in attendance.
"Who has heard of Climate-gate?" 2 of 30 or 6.6% of those in attendance.

Regardless of whether climate-gate is true or not - that won't be decided for some weeks, months, perhaps never - the fact that these kids had heard nothing about a potential scandal surrounding international public policy but had heard about the actual scandal surrounding what ultimate comes to a non-issue in our lives was an eye-opener.

I have not finished my magnum opus "Robust Inference on One Observation," (which when finished will assure me the Nobel Prize), so I hesitate to generalize too much from my one data point, but I wonder if other informal surveys would have the same result.