I was invited in the late Nineties to give a keynote address to an association of academics concerned with a broad range of construction issues. The gathering took place somewhere in England, but I do not remember exactly where it was. I came, gave my talk, and departed within a few hours. Just after my talk, though, someone from the audience asked me a rather technical question about the statistics I was using. As my presentation was about a long series of my own surveys concerning international construction, I was a bit annoyed with the question. “Well,” I chuckled dismissively, “I’m too old to worry about statistics!” What I meant was that I was quite familiar with the survey, which was into its seventh or eighth year already, and that petty details of any kind were thus pretty irrelevant. In fact, I was about to publish a book relying on the statistics in question. Anyhow, there was much merriment in the audience, but there was also a feeling that I was not up to the high standards of the learned gathering. I left it at that. But on occasion I still come across a funny story about my historic mishandling of that question from the audience. Each and every time this happens, I am overwhelmed with joy to have left academia so many years ago. And for good. Let them have all the fun in the world with their fucking statistics.