Statistical Quotes
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Table of contents:
This page contains a collection of quotations, and
some jokes on statistics. The page is subdivided into
citations (including the origin), remarks or comments to think over,
and a more funny part of jokes. My intention is to get some "food
for thought" and more entertaining pages onto the WWW. Enjoy
yourself.
Do you know of
good quotes and jokes on Statistics?
Please don't hesitate, and give me your input, a good quote or
funny joke to
to be published here soon. Thanks in advance.
Special thanks for contributions to this page: Jerry Koske, Graham D.
Smith, Keith Peterson, Perry Meade, Ross Upchurch and Dean
S.Barron.
Some of the following quotes come from the nice book
"Statistically Speaking" - A
Dictionary of Quotations, selected and arranged by Carl C.Gaither and
Alma E.Cavazos-Gaither (
IOP Publishing 
- 1996).
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The long-range contribution of statistics depends not so much
upon getting a lot of highly trained statisticians into industry as
it does in creating a statistically minded generation of
physicists, chemists, engineers, and others who will in any way
have a hand in developing and directing the production processes of
tomorrow. - W.A.Shewhart & W.E.Deming
-
The fundamental difference between engineering with and
without statistics boils down to the difference between the use of
a scientific method based upon the concept of laws of nature that
do not allow for chance or uncertainty and a scientific method
based upon the concept of laws of probability as an attribute of
nature. - W.A.Shewhart
-
When you can measure what you are speaking about and express
it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot
measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge
is of the meager and unsatisfactory kind. - Lord
Kelvin (British physicist)
-
1. If quality and productivity are to improve from current
levels, changes must be made in the way things are presently being
done.
2. We should like to have good data to serve as a rational basis
on which to make these changes.
3. The twin question must then be addressed: what data should be
collected, and, once collected, how should they be analyzed?
4. Statistics is the science that addresses this twin
question. - W.G.Hunter
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All measurements are subject to variation.
-
The minute a statistician steps into the position of the
executive who must make decisions and defend them, the statistician
ceases to be a statistician. - W.E.Deming
-
I feel that the kind of examples of statistical analysis that
tend to be considered in professional discussions ... are so
grossly over-simplified as to make a pretentious mockery of
real-life situations and statistical consultancy. -
A.Ehrenberg
-
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics! -
B.Disraeli
-
It has long recognized by public men of all kinds ... that
statistics come under the head of lying, and that no lie is so
false or inconclusive as that which is based on statistics.
- H.Belloc
-
Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish
fulfillment. - J.Baudrillard
-
Where is the knowledge that is lost in information? Where is
the wisdom that is lost in knowledge? -
T.S.Eliot
-
One picture is worth more than ten thousand words.
-
The only useful function of a statistician is to make
predictions, and thus to provide a basis for action. -
W.E.Deming
-
The most powerful mathematical tools are sometimes less
important to the engineer than some of the simpler or less powerful
tools. But often, for lack of information about either, neither is
used. - C.M.Ryerson
-
A knowledge of statistics is like a knowledge of foreign
languages or of algebra; it may prove of use at any time under any
circumstances. - A.L.Bowley
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There are lies, darned lies, and statistical outliers.
-
Statistics means never having to say you're
certain.
-
Statistics is the art of never having to say you're
wrong. Variance is what any two statisticians are at. -
C.J.Bradfield
-
A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise
line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone
conclusion.
-
A statistician is a person who stands in a bucket of ice
water, sticks their head in an oven and says "on average, I
feel fine!" - K.Dunnigan
-
A statistician drowned while crossing a stream that was, on
average, 6 inches deep.
-
Most people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post,
more for support than enlightenment.
-
Figures don't lie, but liars figure. -
Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain)
-
Are statisticians normal?
-
An engineer, a physicist, and a statistician were moose
hunting in northern Canada. After a short walk through the marshes
they spotted a HUGE moose 150 metres away. The engineer raised his
gun and fired at the moose. A puff of dust showed that the bullet
landed 3 metres to the right of the moose. The physicist, realizing
that there was a substantial breeze that the engineer did not
account for, aimed to the left of the moose and fired. The bullet
landed 3 metres to the left of the moose. The statistician jumped
up and down and screamed "We got him! We got him!"
-
The weather man is never wrong. Suppose he says that
there's an 80% chance of rain. If it rains, the 80% chance came
up; if it doesn't, the 20% chance came up! -
Saul Barron
Goback to top / Introduction / Citations / Remarks / Jokes / Other Pages
Goback to top / Introduction / Citations / Remarks / Jokes / Other Pages
Last update on 09. May 2004,
©1995-2004
Introduction
Huge collection (about 3000) of
science-related jokes (not limited to statistics), by Joachim Verhagen.