Paradox (literature)
Paradox, however, is essential to the structure and being of the poem. In "The Well Wrought Urn" Brooks shows that paradox was so essential to poetic meaning that paradox was almost identical to poetry. According to literary theorist Leroy Searle, Brooks' use of paradox emphasized the indeterminate lines between form and content. "The form of the poem uniquely embodies its meaning," and the language of the poem "affects the reconciliation of opposites or contraries." While irony functions within the poem, paradox often refers to the meaning and structure of the poem and is thus inclusive of irony. This existence of opposites or contraries and the reconciliation thereof is poetry and the meaning of the poem.
Simpson's paradox
Simpson's paradox (or Simpson's reversal, Yule–Simpson effect, amalgamation paradox, or reversal paradox), is a phenomenon in probability and statistics, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined.
This result is often encountered in social-science and medical-science statistics and is particularly problematic when frequency data is unduly given causal interpretations. The paradoxical elements disappear when causal relations are brought into consideration. It has been used to try to inform the non-specialist or public audience about the kind of misleading results mis-applied statistics can generate. Martin Gardner wrote a popular account of Simpson's paradox in his March 1976 Mathematical Games column in "Scientific American".