Statistics Quotes

“Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge.”

“Life cannot have had a random beginning... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10^40,000.”

“The tails come apart.”

“If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.”

“The law of gravitation is not a law of the single event; it is a law of averages.”

“Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.”

“The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.”

“Every experiment may be said to exist only in order to give the facts a chance of disproving the null hypothesis.”

“Counting is a technology of power.”

“Probability is a Janus-faced concept. On the one side it is statistical... On the other side it is epistemological, dedicated to assessing reasonable degrees of belief.”

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts—for support rather than for illumination.”

“Statistics is the grammar of science.”

“If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers.”

“The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard.”

“To teach doubt and confidence is what a statistical education is about.”

“Baseball is a soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking.”

“Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you would be perfectly comfortable.”

“Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.”

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

“While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty.”