Quotessence
Home / Topics / Probability Quotes

Probability Quotes

Browse 544 quotes about Probability.

Related topics

IfsSciencePeopleCertaintyMenEventsChanceMayTheoryFactsKnowsWorldLawPossibilityShouldThinkingDoeStatisticsHigherMathematicsWayWould BeBelieveDegreesHappensImpossibleReasonHas BeensHumansMathematicalStatesWantMindNumbersProcessRiskTwoGivingMathMatterNextProbability TheoryBeliefConsequenceExistenceGivenLooksLowsPhysicsUniverseUseZeroCasesCausesCommonEarthIncreaseLogicProblemRangeRealityTryingWellsWholeAbsolutesCertainDecisionDifferentEvidenceGreaterInvestingMadeNeedsPercentResultsSidesYearsChoicesConceptsDesireDiesErrorsFallFirstsIgnoranceInformationLevelsLyingMightModernOrderOughtPersonsRealReasonableTermActionAnswersArtCalculusmore

Probability Quotes

“It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.”

KnowsStoriesTogetherNaturalResultsExampleArgumentResponseAccidentsFavorsBeing TrueAlternativesExplanationAbandonChemicalsMechanismLackingProbabilitySelectionSequenceNatural SelectionCredibleSchemas
Author:Thomas Nagel
Create image

“But the indeterminate future is somehow one in which probability and statistics are the dominant modality for making sense of the world. Bell curves and random walks define what the future is going to look like. The standard pedagogical argument is that high schools should get rid of calculus and replace it with statistics, which is really important and actually useful. There has been a powerful shift toward the idea that statistical ways of thinking are going to drive the future.”

ThinkingWorldWayShouldLooksHas BeensImportantIdeasSchoolWalksPowerfulStandardsHigh SchoolArgumentMake SenseStatisticsBellsDominantProbabilityCurvesWay Of ThinkingCalculus
Author:Peter Thiel
Create image

“A Resource-Based Economy is in the application of the methods of science with human concern and environmental concern. If we used the scientific method throughout the world, the probability of war drops to zero. The probability of human suffering disappears. Deprivation, poverty, crime - all those things tend to disappear because there's no basis. I'm strictly concerned with the environment that people are raised in and if that environment is altered, so will behaviors be altered.”

PeopleIfsWorldHumansWarUsedSufferingPovertyEconomyEnvironmentCrimeBehaviorResourcesConcernConcernedBasesMethodRaisedEnvironmentalDisappearZeroApplicationProbabilityAlteredDeprivationScientific MethodHuman Suffering
Author:Jacque Fresco
Create image

“The belief in the probability of death with dignity is our, and society’s, attempt to deal with the reality of what is all too frequently a series of destructive events that involve by their very nature the disintegration of the dying person’s humanity. I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.”

PersonsRealityHumanityDiesBeliefProcessDealsDyingEventsDignitySeriesDestructiveProbabilityDisintegrationDeath With Dignity
Book:How We Die
Create image

“If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.”

IfsMayUniverseGamesChanceBehindsWonderWrittenProduceBirthLuckyDrawsEternityEnormousCellsAtomsFabricProbabilityAssemblyBacteria
Author:Christian de Duve
Create image

“Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from our long struggle to see things 'as they are,' or in the most universally comprehensible way, and not as projections of our own emotions. Thunder is not a tantrum in the sky, disease is not a divine punishment, and not every death or accident results from witchcraft. What we call the Enlightenment and hold on to only tenuously, by our fingernails, is the slow-dawning understanding that the world is unfolding according to its own inner algorithms of cause and effect, probability and chance, without any regard for human feelings.”

WorldWayHumansLongHas BeensFeelingsCausesUnderstandingChanceResultsEmotionStruggleProgressSkyEffectsDivineDiseaseIntellectualEnlightenmentRegardAccidentsPunishmentProbabilityThunderProjectionWitchcraftUnfoldingCause And EffectAlgorithmsFingernailsTantrums
Book:Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Create image

“Pi is not merely the ubiquitous factor in high school geometry problems; it is stitched across the whole tapestry of mathematics, not just geometry's little corner of it. Pi occupies a key place in trigonometry too. It is intimately related to e, and to imaginary numbers. Pi even shows up in the mathematics of probability”

LittlesWholeShowsProblemSchoolNumbersKeysHigh SchoolMathematicsCornersFactorsRelatedImaginaryProbabilityGeometryTapestryTrigonometryImaginary Numbers
Author:Robert Kanigel
Create image

“In corporation [corporate] religions as in others, the heretic must be cast out not because of the probability that he is wrong but because of the possibility that he is right.”

PossibilityCastsCorporateCorporationsProbabilityHeretic
Book:Management and Machiavelli: discovering a new science of management in the timeless principles of statecraft
Create image

“Thus we can get the correct answer for the probability of partial reflection by imagining (falsely) that all reflection comes from only the front and back surfaces. In this intuitively easy analysis, the 'front surface' and 'back surface' arrows are mathematical constructions that give us the right answer, whereas .... a more accurate representation of what is really going on: partial reflection is the scattering of light by electrons inside the glass.”

GivingLightEasyAnswersFrontsReflectionMathematicsGlassesSurfaceMathematicalAnalysisConstructionAccurateRepresentationProbabilityArrowsElectronsRight Answers
Author:Richard P. Feynman
Create image

“"I think you're begging the question," said Haydock, "and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things like that, you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that!"”

IfsThinkingMenSaidI CanBlackWhiteTerribleExerciseSixLet MeMathematicsRoundsMathMathematicalProportionHatsWorking ItProbabilityBeggingX MenLoomingBlack Hats
Book:Five complete Miss Marple novels
Create image

“It is only by fidelity in little things that the grace of true love to God can be sustained, and distinguished from a passing fervor of spirit. . . . No one can well believe that our piety is sincere, when our behavior is lax and irregular in its little details. What probability is there that we should not hesitate to make the greatest sacrifices, when we shrink from the smallest?”

LoveShouldBelieveWellsLittlesSpiritBeliefGraceSacrificeBehaviorDetailsPassingPassingsSincereLittle ThingsSmallestProbabilityShrinksDistinguishedFidelityPietyFervorLax
Author:Francois Fenelon
Create image

“Much attention has been focused on the MMR shot itself, whereas in all probability it is a combination of the three factors listed above: the increasing number of vaccines, the large amount of mercury, and the inherent danger of the triple vaccine.....The MMR vaccine is also especially suspect because laboratories in England, Ireland, and Japan have found evidence of MMR vaccine viruses in the intestinal tracts of autistic children, but not in control group, non-autistic children.”

ChildrenHas BeensThreeFoundNumbersAttentionGroupsDangerAmountShotsEvidenceEnglandFocusedFactorsCombinationJapanSuspectsIrelandInherentAutismProbabilityLaboratoryVirusesVaccinesAutisticMercuryAutistic Children
Author:Bernard Rimland
Create image

“One of the most striking and fundamental things about probability theory is that it leads to an understanding of the otherwise strange fact that events which are individually capricious and unpredictable can, when treated en masse, lead to very stable average performances.”

FactsUnderstandingEventsStrangeTheoryPerformancesFundamentalsInvestingAverageTreatedStableUnpredictableProbabilityCapriciousProbability Theory
Book:Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability
Create image

“Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle.”

PeopleIfsLittlesSometimesHelpingMightChristianReligionPrayerLike YouBattleDrawsAdvantageStrongerTreatedConclusionGrantedPostsDesperateProbabilityOur PrayersHastyGreat Battle
Author:C. S. Lewis
Create image

“At one time, the earth was supposed to be flat. Well, so it is, even today, from Paris to Asnieres. But that fact doesn't prevent science from proving that the earth as a whole is spherical. No one nowadays denies it. Well...we are still at the stage of believing that life itself is flat, the distance from birth to death. Yet the probability is that life, too, is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know.”

KnowsBelieveWellsStillsWholeFactsTodayEarthStagePerspectiveBirthProveDistanceDenySupposed To BeParisFlatsOne TimeProbabilityHemisphere
Author:Vincent Van Gogh
Create image

“He went to bed early, but could not fall asleep. He was haunted by sad and gloomy reflections about the inevitable end- death. These thoughts were familiar to him, many times had he turned them over this way and that, first shuddering at the probability of annihilation, then welcoming it, almost rejoicing in it. Suddenly a peculiarly familiar agitation took possession of him... He mused awhile, sat down at the table, and wrote down the following lines in his sacred copy-book, without a single correction.”

WayFirstsBookEndsFallLinesBedReflectionTablesSacredFollowingPossessionFamiliarWelcomeInevitableSatCopiesRejoiceProbabilityCorrectionsGloomyAnnihilationAgitationShuddering
Book:Delphi Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated)
Create image

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don't even recognize that growth is happening...Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”

ShouldLongSeemsNextWaitingGrowthRealizingLevelsStepsOur LivesPersonalityPeriodsHappeningsBreathsPreparedPhasesProbabilityConfusingNext StepsUnsure
Author:Alice Walker
Create image