The master of superstition, is the people; and in all superstition, wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
The statistics requested respecting the number of crimes that have been solved by tracing the firearm back to the registered owner are not kept at this time and are therefore not available.
Too darned good a machine can be a menace, not a help.
We must see whether the same clock with weights will go faster at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of a mine; it is probable, if the pull of the weights decreases on the mountain and increases in the mine, that the earth has real attraction.
Do not expect to be hailed as a hero when you make your great discovery. More likely you will be a ratbag-maybe failed by your examiners. Your statistics, or your observations, or your literature study, or your something else will be patently deficient. Do not doubt that in our enlightened age the really important advances are and will be rejected more often than acclaimed. Nor should we doubt that in our own professional lifetime we too will repudiate with like pontifical finality the most significant insight ever to reach our desk.
Damn description, it is always disgusting.
Having always observed that most of them who constantly took in the weekly Bills of Mortality made little other use of them than to look at the foot how the burials increased or decreased, and among the Casualties what had happened, rare and extraordinary, in the week current; so as they might take the same as a Text to talk upon in the next company, and withal in the Plague-time, how the Sickness increased or decreased, that the Rich might judg of the necessity of their removal, and Trades-men might conjecture what doings they were likely to have in their respective dealings.
In my 45-year career as an investment counselor, humility did show me the need for worldwide diversification to reduce risk. That career did help me to become more and more humble because statistics showed that when I advised a client to buy one stock to replace another, about one-third of the time the client would have done better to ignore my advice. In other endeavors, humility about how little I know has encouraged me to listen more carefully and more wisely.
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
Baseball statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but not everything.
I don't believe in statistics. There are too many factors that can't be measured. You can't measure a ballplayer's heart.
Man is a tool-making animal
Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns, according to Department of Justice statistics. This does not include suicides or the tens of thousands of robberies, rapes and assaults committed with handguns. This level of violence must be stopped.
If one in twenty does not seem high enough odds, we may, if we prefer it, draw the line at one in fifty (the 2 per cent. point), or one in a hundred (the 1 per cent. point). Personally, the writer prefers to set a low standard of significance at the 5 per cent. point, and ignore entirely all results which fail to reach this level. A scientific fact should be regarded as experimentally established only if a properly designed experiment rarely fails to give this level of significance.
A fool must now and then be right, by chance
"I was counting the waves", replied Amory gravely, "I'm going in for statistics".
Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.
I never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in that, as soon as I reach nine times seven- [He lapsed into deep thought, trying to figure nine times seven. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer to him.] I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage a statistic.
You read statistics all the time like, "13 million people are at risk because of the severe drought in East Africa," but I think those kinds of numbers fall on deaf ears - there's so much devastation in the world, that it's a bit overwhelming for people.
In the world of minor lunacy the behaviour of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.
There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . .
According to statistics, it's a lot easier to get hit by lightning than to win a Lotto jackpot. The good side: you don't hear from your relatives.
I cannot resist making the observation that some people use statistics as a drunk uses a lamppost - more to lean on than for illumination.
The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.
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