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<title>Statistics Quotes</title>

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<h1>Statistics Quotes</h1>

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<li> "Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty."

John Finley

<li> "Natural selection is a mechanism for gene= rating an exceedingly

high degree of improbability."

R. A. Fisher

<li> "... the actual and physical conduct of an experiment must

govern the statistical procedure of its interpretation."

R. A. Fisher

<li> "Modern statisticians are familiar with the notion that any

finite body of data contains only a limited amount of<= o:p>

information on any point under examination; that this = limit is

set by the nature of the data themselves, and cannot b= e

increased by any amount of ingenuity expended in their=

statistical examination: that the statistician's task,= in fact,

is limited to the extraction of the whole of the avail= able

information on any particular issue."<= /p>

R. A. Fisher

<li> "The science of statistics is the chief instrumentality

through which the progress of civilization is now meas= ured, and

by which its development hereafter will be largely controlled."

S. N. D. North

<li> "While nothing is more uncertain than a si= ngle life, nothing is

more certain than the average duration of a thousand lives."

Elizur Wright

<li> "... the null hypothesis is never proved or established, but is

possibly disproved, in the = course of experimentation. Every experiment

may be said to exist only t= o give the facts a chance of disproving the

null hypothesis."=

R. A. Fisher

<li> "... a hypothesis test tells us whether the observed data are

consistent with the null hypothesis, and a confidence interval tells

us which hypotheses are con= sistent with the data."

William C. Blackwelder

<li> "You can't fix by analysis what you bungle= d by design."

Light, Singer and Willett, page v

<li> "Numerical quantities focus on expected va= lues, graphical summaries on

unexpected values."

John Tukey

<li> "Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for

efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write."

H.G.Wells

<li> "If you need statistics to prove it, it is= n't true."

One of Barbara Doyle's Professors

<li> "Statistics are the triumph of the quantit= ative method, and the

quantitative method is the = victory of sterility and death"

Hilaire Belloc<= /p>

<li> "Facts speak louder than statistics"<= o:p>

Mr. Justice Streatfield (1= 950)

<li> "If all the statisticians in the world wer= e laid head

to toe, they wouldn't be ab= le to reach a conclusion"

Anon., after comment on economists by G. B. Shaw<= /o:p>

<li> "You should treat as many patients as poss= ible with the new drugs

while they still have the p= ower to heal."

Armand Trousseau, 19 Century French physician

<li> "An approximate answer to the right proble= m is worth a good deal more

than an exact answer to an approximate problem."

<= o:p>

John Tukey

<li> "Every third person in Israel saw 1.8 publ= ic theater shows last year."

Newspaper headline posted on Maya Bar Hillel's board.<= o:p>

<li> "All life is an experiment. The more exper= iments you make, the

better."

<= o:p>

Ralph Waldo Emerson

<li> "By a small sample, we may judge of the wh= ole piece."

Miguel de Cervantes from Don Quixote

<li> "The organized charity, scrimped and iced,=

In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ."

John Boyle O'Reilly

<li> "The most important questions of life are,= for the most part,

really only problems of probability."

Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace

<li> "Now go, write it before them in a table, = and note it in a book."

Isaiah, XXX 8

<li> "You believe in a God who plays dice, and = I in complete law and order

= in a world which objectively exists, and which I,

= in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture.

= I firmly believe, but hope that someone will discover a more realistic way,

or = rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to do.

= Even the great initial success of the quantum theory

= does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game,=

= although I am well aware that your younger colleagues =

= interpret this as a consequence of senility."

= Albert Einstein, Letter to Max Born.

<li>"God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the dice

where they cannot be seen.&= quot;

Stephen William Hawking

<li>"Thou shalt not answer questionnaires<= /o:p>

Or quizzes up= on world affairs,

Nor with comp= liance

Take any test= .

Thou shalt no= t sit with statisticians nor commit

A social science."

W. H. Auden

<li>"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts--for support

rather than illumination.&q= uot;

<= o:p>

Andrew Lang

<li>"If your experiment needs statistics, you o= ught to have done a better

experiment."

Lord Ernest Rutherford

<li>"[Statistics are] the only tools by which an opening can be cut

through the formidable thic= ket of difficulties that bars the path of

those who pursue the scienc= e of man."

Sir Francis Galton

<li>"A judicious man looks on statistics not to= get knowledge, but to save

himself from having ignoran= ce foisted on him."

Thomas Carlyle

<li>"Statistics are the heart of democracy." Simeon Strunsky

<li>"Statistics are no substitute for judgment." Henry Clay

<li> "The only relevant test of the validity of= a hypothesis is comparison

of its predictions with experience."

Milton Friedman

<li> "It is a capital mistake to theorize befor= e one has data."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

<li> "If one takes care of the means, the end w= ill take care of itself."

Ghandi

<li>"The sciences do not try to explain, they h= ardly even try to

interpret, they mainly make= models. By a model is meant a mathematical

construct which, with the a= ddition of certain verbal interpretations,

describes observed phenomen= a. The justification of such a mathematical

construct is solely and pre= cisely that it is expected to work"

John Von Neumann

<li> "Absolute certainty is a privilege of uned= ucated minds-and

fanatics. It is, for scient= ific folk, an unattainable ideal."

Cassius J. Keyser

<li> "The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex

facts... Seek simplicity and distrust it."

A. N. Whitehead

<li> "The aim ... is to provide a clear and rig= orous basis for

determining when a causal ordering can be said to hold between

two variables or groups of variables in a model . . . = . The

concepts refer to a model-a system of equations-and no= t to the

'real' world the model purports to describe."=

H. Simon=

<li> "If ... we choose a group of social phenom= ena with no

antecedent knowledge of the causation or absence of causation

among them, then the calculation of correlation coefficients,

total or partial, will not advance us a step toward evaluating

the importance of the causes at work.

R. A. Fisher<= o:p>

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