Statistics Quotes - Page 20

• Theories are just fantasies. And they change.

  Michael Crichton

  Fantasy, Theory

  Michael Crichton (1997). “The Lost World”, Knopf

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• If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.

  Ronald Coase

  Truth, Knowledge, Data

  "A Comment on Daniel Klein's 'A Plea to Economists Who Favor Liberty'" by Gordon Tullock, Eastern Economic Journal, 2001.

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• All those statistics that you are gathering about your own experiences and about others are only about how somebody has flowed Energy. It isn't about any hard fast reality.

  Esther Hicks

  Reality, Energy, Gathering

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• Sometimes one must try anything, it is no disgrace. On the contrary, it is a sign of wisdom.

  Philip K. Dick

  Trying, Sometimes, Disgrace

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “The Man in the High Castle”, p.240, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Once you can reproduce a phenomenon, you are well on the way to understanding it.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Understanding, Way, Wells

  Arthur C. Clarke (2011). “Voices from the Sky”, p.46, Hachette UK

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• Years ago a statistician might have claimed that statistics deals with the processing of data. . . to-days statistician will be more likely to say that statistics is concerned with decision making in the face of uncertainty.

  Herman Chernoff

  Years, Data, Decision

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• According to statistics, one person out of five is disturbed. If there are four people around you who seem normal, that's not good.

  Jean-Claude Van Damme

  People, Four, Normal

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• Individual human beings are so subtly developed through the centuries that it is strictly impermissible to compare any two men who are not contemporaries-that is to say are taken from two quite different times.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Taken, Men, Two

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1965). “The Appearance of Man”

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• Those who refused to respond to the new stimulus would perish. Adapt or perish.

  Philip K. Dick

  Stimulus

  "Time Out of Joint".

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• The past has revealed to me the structure of the future.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Past, Structure

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• It science involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible.

  John Dewey

  Weed, Intelligent, Giving

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Sidney Hook (2008). “The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 9: 1916, Democracy and Education”, p.227, SIU Press

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• I look upon statistics as the handmaid of medicine, but on that very account I hold that it befits medicine to treat her handmaid with proper respect, and not to prostitute her services for controversial or personal purposes.

  Karl Pearson

  Husband, Science, Medicine

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• Does the human being reason? No; he thinks, muses, reflects, but does not reason...that is, in the two things which are the peculiar domain of the heart, not the mind, politics and religion. He doesn't want to know the other side. He wants arguments and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.

  Mark Twain

  Heart, Thinking, Two

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• It is futile to try to make the universe add up. But I guess we must go on anyhow.

  Philip K. Dick

  Trying, Add, Goes On

  Philip K. Dick (1990). “Beyond Lies the Wub”

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• Considering the alternative. . . it's not too bad at all.

  Maurice Chevalier

  Alternatives, Considering

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• The empiric easily degenerates into the quack. He does not know where his knowledge begins or leaves off, and so when he gets beyond routine conditions he begins to pretend-to make claims for which there is no justification, and to trust to luck and to ability to impose upon others-to "bluff."

  John Dewey

  Luck, Degenerates, Doe

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education: Top American Authors”, p.198, 谷月社

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• That is probable which for the most part usually comes to pass, or which is a part of the ordinary beliefs of mankind.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Ordinary, Belief, Mankind

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1968). “Cicero”

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• It was one thing to have guessed it, another to have had that guess confirmed beyond possibility of refutation.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Possibility, Refutation, One Thing

  Arthur C. Clarke (2012). “The City and the Stars”, p.22, RosettaBooks

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• I'm a visual thinker, really bad at algebra. There's others that are a pattern thinker. These are the music and math minds. They think in patterns instead of pictures. Then there's another type that's not a visual thinker at all, and they're the ones that memorize all of the sports statistics, all of the weather statistics.

  Temple Grandin

  Sports, Math, Thinking

  "A Conversation with Temple Grandin". "Talk of the Nation" with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. January 20, 2006.

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• Death is a convention, a certification to the end of pain, something for the vital statistics book, not binding upon anyone but the keepers of graveyard records.

  Wallace Stegner

  Death, Pain, Book

  Wallace Earle Stegner (1995). “Where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs: living and writing in the West”, Random House Value Pub

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• Quite often, most of us are defined first by our vital statistics - our sex, our height, our weight, the colour of our eyes and then we're defined by our job.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Jobs, Sex, Eye

  "Archipelago - Tom Hiddleston interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.

  Edward Gibbon

  Science, Law, Mathematical

  Gibbon's Autobiography (p. 124)

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• Psychologists really aim to be scientists, white-coat stuff, with elaborate statistics, running experiments.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Running, White, Coats

  "Daniel Kahneman: 'We're beautiful devices'". Interview with Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. November 14, 2011.

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• Software breaks before it bends, so it demands perfection in a universe that prefers statistics.

  Jaron Lanier

  Perfection, Demand, Break

  "The New Humanists: Science at the Edge". Book edited by John Brockman, 2003.

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• We tell stories. We talk about statistics. And in 1978, we added an element of the show that gave it its heartbeat: the long distance dedication.

  Casey Kasem

  Distance, Dedication, Long

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