The suggestion was to make this a footnote, not a note.  Also, it should probably say that the stmt is executed inside a function, meaning that instead of being a syntax error it changes the return value of the internal timeit function.

I understand Raymond's desire not to clutter the docs, but I consider the footnote worth it, not to pre-inform the user, but to let them know that it is not a bug if they check the docs *after* things don't work right.  It may be naive of me to think that they would do so.