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Statistician Quotes

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Statistician Quotes

“I keep notations, like my mother. She had notebook after notebook of trials and errors, all written in her perfect penmanship on quad-ruled pages, a square for each letter to nest in. My journal is a thick black hardcover with unlined pages. Like her, I'm a technician, a statistician, copiously documenting slight variations in texture, color, taste. I'm a chemist. A quarter cup of rye flour added to the white wheat gives a sweeter flavor. A half teaspoon more salt and 78 percent hydration of the dough result in those coveted large, irregular rooms in the crumb. Mastering formulas, not recipes, in the quest for the perfect loaf. Xavier tells me not to bother. He doesn't believe in perfection. "Forget the ingredients. Forget the environment. 'You' are different each day. You can't replicate yourself. Your hands are stronger, or weaker. Your mind thinks different thoughts while kneading. Life is all over you, changing you. All that goes into the making comes out in the bread. It won't be the same from one batch to the next. Not ever." "It'll be close, though." "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." He's the artist. He makes me brave enough to try. With his encouragement, I've focused on the creativity of bread, writing my own recipes, exploring nontraditional flavors and shapes. Not all of them turn out well, but he tastes my failures with me, with layers of warm butter.”

FormulasMother And DaughterChemistStatisticianXavierLiesl McnamaraBread Making
Book:Stones For Bread
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“Early in the speech, when Sanzite had been describing the impressive gains in average income, a man had stood up and shouted “What About the Median?” That man had been quickly suppressed, and Sanzite had continued. A few minutes later, Sanzite had moved on to the extraordinary increases in average life expectancy, when dozens of people began the chant. “What about the Median? What about the Median? What about the Median?” Clearly the screening process for attendees had massively failed. The infoterrorists had somehow brought in materials to cement themselves to the fixed theater chairs, so removing them was slow. And worst of all had been Sanzite’s mistake. “Seems everybody’s a statistician these days,” he quipped into the live microphone, and inadvertently coined the name of a new movement. The version seen by over ninety nine percent of viewers was sanitized, but the damage had been done. Recordings of Sanzite’s remark, with the chant in the background, still surfaced from time to time.”

AverageStatisticsStatisticianMedian
Book:The Great Symmetry
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“The once rather old-fashioned science of paleontology finds itself in a maelstrom of excitement and controversy. Astrophysicists, atmospheric scientists, geochemists, geophysicists, and statisticians are all contributing to the extinction problem. And the general public is taking part through television talk shows, magazine cover stories, newspaper editorials, and even the occasional mention in gossip columns.”

StoriesShowsProblemTelevisionScientistNewspapersMagazinesExcitementGossipOld FashionedControversyExtinctionOccasionalColumnsContributingEditorialsTalk ShowsGeneral PublicStatisticianPaleontologyMagazine CoversMaelstrom
Author:David M. Raup
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“I have been accused of being ignorant of economics (although I am the founder and Chairman of the Board of a company which publishes seven professional economic newsletters), of being ignorant of sociology (although I am trained in sociology and was C. Wright Mills' research assistant at Columbia), of being unable to use statistics (although I earned my living as a professional statistician for five years) and of ignoring political factors (although all my graduate training was in political science).”

YearsHas BeensUsePoliticalCompanyFiveEconomicTrainingResearchEconomicsSevenIgnorantFactorsBoardsFive YearsStatisticsGraduatesFoundersSociologyAccusedPublishPolitical ScienceChairmanAssistantsMillsColumbiaStatisticianBeing IgnorantNewsletters
Book:The New Psychohistory
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“Modern statisticians are familiar with the notion that any finite body of data contains only a limited amount of information on any point under examination; that this limit is set by the nature of the data themselves, and cannot be 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 available information on any particular issue.”

WholeFactsBodyIssuesModernInformationParticularAmountLimitsTasksNotionAvailableFamiliarDataStatisticsFiniteExaminationIngenuityStatisticianExtraction
Author:Ronald Fisher
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“Statistics is, or should be, about scientific investigation and how to do it better, but many statisticians believe it is a branch of mathematics. Now I agree that the physicist, the chemist, the engineer, and the statistician can never know too much mathematics, but their objectives should be better physics, better chemistry, better engineering, and in the case of statistics, better scientific investigation. Whether in any given study this implies more or less mathematics is incidental.”

KnowsShouldBelieveGivenCasesStudyToo MuchMathematicsAgreePhysicsObjectivesBranchesStatisticsChemistryEngineeringEngineersInvestigationPhysicistChemistStatistician
Author:George E. P. Box
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“I may remark parenthetically that the modern apparatus of the theory of small samples, once it goes beyond the determination of its own specially defined parameters and becomes a method for positive statistical inference in new cases, does not inspire me with any confidence unless it is applied by a statistician by whom the main elements of the dynamics of the situation are either explicitly known or implicitly felt.”

MayDoeFeltSituationKnownCasesModernInspireTheoryElementsDeterminationMethodDefinedRemarksDynamicsSampleParametersInferenceStatistician
Book:Cybernetics Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
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“It is difficult to understand why statisticians commonly limit their inquiries to Averages, and do not revel in more comprehensive views. Their souls seem as dull to the charm of variety as that of the native of one of our flat English counties, whose retrospect of Switzerland was that, if its mountains could be thrown into its lakes, two nuisances would be got rid of at once.”

IfsTwoSoulSeemsWould BeDifficultViewsMountainLimitsAverageVarietyCharmDullNativeThrownLakesFlatsInquiryComprehensiveCountyRetrospectSwitzerlandNuisanceStatistician
Author:Francis Galton
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“Olympics are three times more likely to be employed than people of a similar age, ethnic and socioeconomic status who have not been participating. It's a correlation, not a causation as far as the statisticians go, but the fascinating question is; Is there something in participation in sports, in community-building, confidence building, self-image-building, strength building, social networking - that greatly enhance employability?”

PeopleSelfAgeThreeSocialSportsCommunityBuildingFascinatingOlympicsParticipationEmployedThree TimesNetworkingSocial NetworkingParticipatingSocial NetworkCorrelationStatisticianCausationConfidence BuildingCommunity BuildingBuilding ConfidenceSocioeconomic Status
Author:Timothy Shriver
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“The investigation of causal relations between economic phenomena presents many problems of peculiar difficulty, and offers many opportunities for fallacious conclusions. Since the statistician can seldom or never make experiments for himself, he has to accept the data of daily experience, and discuss as best he can the relations of a whole group of changes; he cannot, like the physicist, narrow down the issue to the effect of one variation at a time. The problems of statistics are in this sense far more complex than the problems of physics.”

WholeProblemScienceOpportunityCausesAcceptingIssuesGroupsEconomicEffectsOffersEconomicsDifficultyRelationComplexesPhysicsExperimentsConclusionDataStatisticsPeculiarInvestigationPhysicistVariationStatisticianDaily Experience
Author:Udny Yule
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