Quotessence
Home / Topics / Statistics Quotes

Statistics Quotes

Browse 982 quotes about Statistics.

Related topics

ScienceMathematicsMathematicalIfsPeopleMathMenThinkingKnowsStatisticianDataCalculusWayLooksNumbersShouldShowsYearsFunnyFactsWorldEducationFirstsMindBelieveHas BeensHumansTwoLyingMayTheoryUseWellsLongBaseballFiguresImportantProbabilityDoeGivingRealHumorousIdeasProblemStudyTryingBeliefIndividualSeemsAnalyticsAverageCausesMightPercentPersonsProveResultsTruthAnswersCasesCertaintyRealitySportsWantChanceDifferentFoundKindLanguageLittlesLogicMadeMatterMeanReasoningSaidValuesAgeArtCountryEnoughFallGamesInspirationalMathematicianSocialStoriesThreeUsedWritingBookChildrenEconomicsEndsHappensIgnoranceJobsLifeMethodModelsmore

Statistics Quotes

“This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called "literary economics," as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the "new economic history." A man does what he can, and in the more elegant - one is tempted to say "fancier" - techniques I am, as one who received his formation in the 1930s, untutored. A colleague has offered to provide a mathematical model to decorate the work. It might be useful to some readers, but not to me. Catastrophe mathematics, dealing with such events as falling off a height, is a new branch of the discipline, I am told, which has yet to demonstrate its rigor or usefulness. I had better wait. Econometricians among my friends tell me that rare events such as panics cannot be dealt with by the normal techniques of regression, but have to be introduced exogenously as "dummy variables." The real choice open to me was whether to follow relatively simple statistical procedures, with an abundance of charts and tables, or not. In the event, I decided against it. For those who yearn for numbers, standard series on bank reserves, foreign trade, commodity prices, money supply, security prices, rate of interest, and the like are fairly readily available in the historical statistics.”

EconomicsFinanceStatisticsEconometrics
Book:Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises
Create image

“You end up with a machine which knows that by its mildest estimate it must have terrible enemies all around and within it, but it can't find them. It therefore deduces that they are well-concealed and expert, likely professional agitators and terrorists. Thus, more stringent and probing methods are called for. Those who transgress in the slightest, or of whom even small suspicions are harboured, must be treated as terrible foes. A lot of rather ordinary people will get repeatedly investigated with increasing severity until the Government Machine either finds enemies or someone very high up indeed personally turns the tide... And these people under the microscope are in fact just taking up space in the machine's numerical model. In short, innocent people are treated as hellish fiends of ingenuity and bile because there's a gap in the numbers.”

GovernmentNumbersEnemySecurityDangerTerrorismStatisticsEnemiesCounter TerrorismStat Filler
Book:The Gone-Away World
Create image

“Significance unfortunately is a useful means toward a personal ends in the advance of science - status and widely distributed publications, a big laboratory, a staff of research assistants, a reduction in teaching load, a better salary, the finer wines of Bordeaux. Precision, knowledge, and control. In a narrow and cynical sense statistical significance is the way to achieve these. Design experiment. Then calculate statistical significance. Publish articles showing "significant" results. Enjoy promotion. But it is not science, and it will not last.”

StatisticsStatistical Analysis
Book:The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives
Create image

“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
Create image

“The exaggerated faith in small samples is only one example of a more general illusion—we pay more attention to the content of messages than to information about their reliability, and as a result end up with a view of the world around us that is simpler and more coherent than the data justify. Jumping to conclusions is a safer sport in the world of our imagination than it is in reality.”

FactsRealityImaginationStatisticsSamples
Book:Thinking, Fast and Slow
Create image

“Flo especially took me in hand. When I felt I had to prove the existence of discrimination with statistics, for instance, she pulled me aside. 'If you're lying in the ditch with a truck on your ankle,' she said patiently, 'you don't send someone to the library to find out how much the truck weighs. You get it off!”

ActivismDiscriminationStatisticsSexismEqual RightsSexism QuotesStatistics HumorEqual Rights ActivistsGloria SteinemFlo KennedyFlorence Kennedy
Book:My Life on the Road
Create image

“With demands for special education or standardized test prep being shouted in their ears, public schools can't always hear a parent when he says: 'I want my child to be able to write contracts in Spanish,' or, 'I want my child to shake hands firmly,' or, 'I want my child to study statistics and accounting, not calculus.”

WantWritingChildrenHandsAbleSchoolParentStudySpecialDemandTestsEarsMy ChildrenShakesStatisticsContractsPublic SchoolAccountingCalculusPrepsSpecial Education
Author:Amity Shlaes
Create image

“What makes a terrorist? Are the drivers primarily political or economic? Princeton economist Alan Krueger has made a great study of this question...What Makes a Terrorist lacks a question mark. That's because Krueger, marshaling persuasive statistics and analysis, comes down firmly on the side of politics, noting most terrorists are middle-class and well-educated.”

WellsMadePoliticalSidesClassStudyEconomicMiddleMarkTerroristEducatedAnalysisMiddle ClassStatisticsDriversEconomistPersuasiveWell EducatedPrincetonQuestion Mark
Author:Thomas P.M. Barnett
Create image

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

InspirationTruthScienceReligionIndividualTechnologyAtheismThousandAuthorityScientistIndependentIndividualityHumblePhysicsAstronomyReasoningStatisticsSkepticismSkepticalSkepticBe HumbleModern ScienceMath And ScienceIndependent ThoughtScientific TruthGreat ScienceScience PhysicsQuestioning BeliefsScience LifeLife Changing Experience
Author:Galileo Galilei
Create image

“In our society competitive capitalism has put family life and working life on a collision course.In Canada statistics show that over 70 percent of the burden of caring for children, the aged, the disabled and the sick falls on women most of whom receive no pay for these very essential tasks.Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of capitalism, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and thus increase the gap between them.”

IfsMayChildrenSaidShowsFallCoursesLeftForcePoorPayRichEssentialsPercentCapitalismTasksSickIncreaseBurdenCaringCanadaOur SocietyStatisticsGapsFamily LifeDisabledCollisionChild CareWorking Life
Author:Jawaharlal Nehru
Create image

“America already holds the record for freak movements. Now we have a new one. It's called "Restoring Confidence." Rich men who never had a mission in life outside of watching a stock ticker are working day and night "restoring confidence." Writers are working night shifts, speakers' tables are littered up, ministers are preaching statistics, all on "restoring confidence."”

MenAmericaNightBusinessRichRecordsMovementTablesMissionsMinistersStatisticsFreakSpeakersPreachingDay And NightRich ManRestoringMissions In LifeNight Shift
Book:Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams: The Coolidge years, 1926-1929
Create image

“Many writers claim that nearly all crime is caused by economic conditions, or in other words that poverty is practically the whole cause of crime. Endless statistics have been gathered on this subject which seem to show conclusively that property crimes are largely the result of the unequal distribution of wealth. But crime of any class cannot be safely ascribed to a single cause. Life is too complex, heredity is too variant and imperfect, too many separate things contribute to human behavior, to make it possible to trace all actions to a single cause.”

HumansHas BeensWholeShowsSeemsActionLife IsCausesWealthResultsClassPovertyEconomicConditionsSubjectsCrimeBehaviorClaimsPropertyComplexesEndlessStatisticsImperfectHuman BehaviorDistributionHeredityDistribution Of Wealth
Author:Clarence Darrow
Create image

“The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . . . The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States. . . . We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us.”

PeopleIfsYearsChildrenLittlesSaidCountryStatesHomeGovernmentForceUnitedCommonPayCompanyUnited StatesMastersPoliticianSlaveDebtStatisticsLoanMonopolySharks
Author:Mary Elizabeth Lease
Create image