Statistics Quotes

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.

~ Steven Magee

In 2012, an estimated 14,827 persons were murdered in the United States.-- Federal Bureau of Investigation

~ Gennaro F. Vito

99 percent of all statistics only tell 49 percent of the story.

~ Ron Delegge Ii

...the facts of economic life cannot be comprehensively described in terms of statistics.

~ Oskar Morgenstern

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.

~ Nate Silver

Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit.but having perused the various tests available that they use to determine whether you're manic depressive. OCD, schizo-affective, schizophrenic, or whatever, I'm surprised the number is that low. So I have gone through a bunch of the available tests, and I've taken questions from each of them, and assembled my own psychological evaluation screening which I thought I'd share with you.So, here are some of the things that they ask to determine if you're mentally disordered1. In the last week, have you been feeling irritable?2. In the last week, have you gained a little weight?3. In the last week, have you felt like not talking to people?4. Do you no longer get as much pleasure doing certain things as you used to?5. In the last week, have you felt fatigued?6. Do you think about sex a lot?If you don't say yes to any of these questions either you're lying, or you don't speak English, or you're illiterate, in which case, I have the distinct impression that I may have lost you a few chapters ago.

~ Carrie Fisher

By the time your perfect information has been gathered, the world has moved on.

~ Phil Dourado

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

~ Scott Edward Shjefte

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.

~ Gary Smith

Information or allegations reflecting negatively on individuals or groups seen less sympathetically by the intelligentsia pass rapidly into the public domain with little scrutiny and much publicity. Two of the biggest proven hoaxes of our time have involved allegations of white men gang-raping a black woman-- first the Tawana Brawley hoax of 1987 and later the false rape charges against three Duke University students in 2006. In both cases, editorial indignation rang out across the land, without a speck of evidence to substantiate either of these charges. Moreover, the denunciations were not limited to the particular men accused, but were often extended to society at large, of whom these men were deemed to be symptoms or 'the tip of the iceberg.' In both cases, the charges fit a pre-existing vision, and that apparently made mundane facts unneces

~ Thomas Sowell

Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.

~ Neil Postman

If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we’d have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they’re erratic. People do crazy things that don’t make sense.

~ Sara Sheridan

Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the odds of an event with a fixed probability increase or decrease depending on recent occurrences of the event is called the gambler's fallacy. For example, if Kerrich landed, say, 44 heads in the first 100 tosses, the coin would not develop a bias towards the tails in order to catch up! That's what is at the root of such ideas as her luck has run out and He is due. That does not happen. For what it's worth, a good streak doesn't jinx you, and a bad one, unfortunately , does not mean better luck is in store.

~ Leonard Mlodinow

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.

~ Michael J. Mauboussin

Dawes observed that the complex statistical algorithm adds little or no value. One can do just as well by selecting a set of scores that have some validity for predicting the outcome and adjusting the values to make them comparable (by using standard scores or ranks). A formula that combines these predictors with equal weights is likely to be just as accurate in predicting new cases as the multiple-regression formula that was optimal in the original sample. More recent research went further: formulas that assign equal weights to all the predictors are often superior, because they are not affected by accidents of sampling.

~ Daniel Kahneman

Statistics are somewhat like old medical journals, or like revolvers in newly opened mining districts. Most men rarely use them, and find it troublesome to preserve them so as to have them easy of access; but when they do want them, they want them badly.

~ John Shaw Billings

Baseball is a soap opera that lends itself to probabilistic thinking. [Dick Cramer]

~ Michael Lewis

Of course, if 40% of women need oxytocin to progress normally, then something is wrong with the definition of normal.

~ Henci Goer

I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged.

~ Roger Jones

I have stressed this distinction because it is an important one. It defines the fundamental difference between probability and statistics: the former concerns predictions based on fixed probabilities, the latter concerns the inference of those probabilities based on observed data.

~ Leonard Mlodinow

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!

~ Gloria Steinem

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.

~ Mark Twain

In a world with amazing amounts of statistics and demographics available, If you don't utilize foresight, statistics, demographics, projections and predictions the competition will.

~ Akutra-Ramses Atenosis Cea

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

~ Steven D. Levitt

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

~ Edward R. Tufte

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.

~ Evan Esar

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.

~ Zig Ziglar

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.

~ Jean Baudrillard

I'm doing everything that I can, working with experts, really studying the statistics to figure out a way we can make it cool or normal to be kind and loving.

~ Lady Gaga

I'm a visual thinker, really bad at algebra. There's others that are a pattern thinker. These are the music and math minds. They think in patterns instead of pictures. Then there's another type that's not a visual thinker at all, and they're the ones that memorize all of the sports statistics, all of the weather statistics.

~ Temple Grandin

Statistics is the grammar of science.

~ Karl Pearson

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.

~ Heinrich Heine

One thing I learned about Gordon Brown is you've got to have the strength to just get in there and take him on. When you first hear him spouting his statistics and boasting about his record, it can be quite intimidating. But over time, shadowing him, I just realised that a lot of it was rubbish; a lot of it was baloney.

~ George Osborne

Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.

~ Hilaire Belloc

Happiness statistics may be most valuable in smaller, local discussions. Understanding how different sorts of programs affect the well-being of citizens would be enormously helpful to a mayor choosing between building a new bridge or offering a tax cut.

~ Adam Davidson

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

~ George Bernard Shaw

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

~ George Bernard Shaw

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

~ Rita Mae Brown

The Government are very keen on amassing statistics - they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams.

~ Josiah Stamp

I think all of us certainly believed the statistics which said that probably 88% chance of mission success and maybe 96% chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds.

~ Alan Shepard