Best 232 quotes in «statistics quotes» category

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.

THIS JET ERA IS RUN/DRIVEN BY DATA. YOUR ANALYSIS WOULD DETERMINE YOUR VALIDITY.

To clarify, *add* data.

We encounter regression to the mean almost every day of our lives. We should try to anticipate it, recognize it, and not be fooled by it.

We have presumed based not on our own but on others’ deaths that we are mortal.

We look to statistcs for reassurance in these types of situations. Here is one: 100% of mass shootings have been enabled by access to guns. I can guarantee that even if there were a genotype shared by the mass shooters, which there will not be, none of the killings would have happened if they didn't have guns.

We usually learn from debates that we seldom learn from debates.

To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of.

Uczeni wyliczyli, że jest tylko jedna szansa na milion, by zaistniało coś tak całkowicie absurdalnego. Jednak magowie obliczyli, że szanse jedna na milion sprawdzają się w dziewięciu przypadkach na dziesięć.

We are more fascinated today by statistical predictions of what the country will be thinking in a few weeks’ time than by visionary predictions of what the country will look like in 10 or 20 years from now.

We may at once admit that any inference from the particular to the general must be attended with some degree of uncertainty, but this is not the same as to admit that such inference cannot be absolutely rigorous, for the nature and degree of the uncertainty may itself be capable of rigorous expression.

Whatever we do during the day, becomes part of the history tomorrow. History is the record of our actions which can’t be undone and our every action becomes a dot in the trend time, making it possible to predict the future

What nature hath joined together, multiple regression analysis cannot put asunder.

When you flip a coin there is a very small but finite chance you will never ever see that coin again.

While most of us are comfortable acknowledging that luck plays a role in what we do, we have difficulty assessing its role after the fact. Once something has occurred and we can put together a story to explain it, it starts to seem like the outcome was predestined. Statistics don't appeal to our need to understand cause and effect, which is why they are so frequently ignored or misinterpreted. Stories, on the other hand, are a rich means to communicate precisely because they emphasize cause and effect.

When it is a law abiding common person versus the police internal affairs regarding a corrupt or incompetent police officer, the statistics show that it is the common person that most frequently loses.

Who needs theory when you have so much information? But this is categorically the wrong attitude to take toward forecasting, especially in a field like economics where the data is so noisy.

With enough mental gymnastics, just about any fact can become misshapen in favor to one's confirmation bias.

Why is your equation only for angels, Roger? Why can't we do something, down here? Couldn't there be an equation for us too, something to help us find a safer place?' 'Why am I surrounded,' his usual understanding self today, 'by statistical illiterates? There's no way, love, not as long as the mean density of strikes is constant.

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.

You’ll also be pleased to know that no resident has been eaten in their sleep here for almost thirty-seven years.

Your relevance as a data custodian is your ability to analyse and interpret it. If you can’t, your replacement is due.

A formal manipulator in mathematics often experiences the discomforting feeling that his pencil surpasses him in intelligence.

When moral posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, the result is often a new, surprising insight.

Writing requires immortal thoughts hidden in your conscience which lead you to all philosophical, emotional, romantic statistics of the humans of this celestial world.

You can flip a coin but Schrodinger's pet cat will still be in that box.

Absolute certainty is a privilege of uneducated minds and fanatics. - It is, for scientific folk, an unattainable ideal.

According to FBI statistics for 2008, only 22 percent of murder victims were killed by strangers. More than 30 percent were slain by family members, boyfriends, and girlfriends. Nearly half of all murders were committed by friends, neighbors, and casual acquaintances.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, before NAFTA went into effect, there were 285,000 auto workers in Michigan. Today, that number is only 160,000.

A marveilous newtrality have these things mathematicall, and also a strange participation between things supernaturall and things naturall.

A little uncertainty is good for everyone.

Art is the expression of the profoundest thoughts in the simplest way.

And with the rape, I was showing why the rape statistics are exaggerated, and saying that date rape was much more complex than the way feminists had portrayed it, as men oppressing women.

And if California slides into the ocean, as the mystics and statistics say it will, I predict this hotel will be standing until I've paid my bill.

A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.

Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.

But just as much as it is easy to find the differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not.

But we must not underestimate the potency of the mathematical process of abstraction. A surprising variety of things happen to have both magnitude and direction and to combine according to the parallelogram law; and many of them are not at all reminiscent of journeys.

A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

Crib death was so infrequent in the pre-vaccination era that it was not even mentioned in the statistics, but it started to climb in the 1950s with the spread of mass vaccination against diseases of childhood.

Don't be too hard on me. Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time.

Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future.

Baseball is probably the world's best documented sport.

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

Don't let the fear of statistics keep you from launching a continual improvement program. The statistics hurdle is easily overcome, going out of business is not.

Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history.

Economics in college was very poor; I was not very impressed with it. I actually wanted to study statistics. I discovered mathematical statistics as an undergraduate and was fascinated with it.

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

For me, unemployment and poverty in the Greater Montreal area is not mainly a problem of structure, or design, or statistics. It is a profoundly human situation.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!