Quotes by Statisticians - Page 2

The person you're most afraid to contradict is yourself.
Nassim Taleb
There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
Florence Nightingale
Every social association that is not face-to-face is injurious to your health
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A central argument is never a summary. It is more like a generator.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My mother explained the magic with this washing machine the very, very first day. She said, 'Now Hans, we have loaded the laundry. The machine will make the work. And now we can go to the library.' Because this is the magic: you load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books out of the machines, children's books.
Hans Rosling
Under Bayes' theorem, no theory is perfect. Rather, it is a work in progress, always subject to further refinement and testing.
Nate Silver
Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful
George E.P. Box
The real difficulty about volcanism is not to see how it can start, but how it can stop.
Harold Jeffreys
I could prove God statistically.
George Gallup
If we weren’t already doing it this way, is this the way we would start?
Paul Depodesta
...it would not be quite right to say that the problem is unsolvable in principle; only so complicated that it is not worth anybody’s time to think about it. So what do we do?In probability theory there is a very clever trick for handling a problem that becomes too difficult. We just solve it anyway by:(1)  making it still harder;(2)  redefining what we mean by ‘solving’ it, so that it becomes something we can do;(3)  inventing a dignified and technical-sounding word to describe this procedure, which has the psychological effect of concealing the real nature of what we have done, and making it appear respectable.
E. T. Jaynes
It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
You ask me why I do not write something.... I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.
Florence Nightingale
Meditation is a way to be narcissistic without hurting anyone
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Love without sacrifice is like theft
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If the past, by bringing surprises, did not resemble the past previous to it (what I call the past's past), then why should our future resemble our current past?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A prophet is not someone who first had an idea. He is the one to first believe in it and take it to its conclusion.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I must strive to see only God in my friends, and God in my cats.
Florence Nightingale
If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers.
Edward R. Tufte
If skeptic can weakly force E, then he can force E.
Glenn Shafer
We shouldn’t abbreviate the truth but rather get a new method of presentation.
Edward Tufte
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.
W. Edwards Deming
There are two main reasons why this assumption is wrong. First, once basic material needs have been met, there is very little evidence that pursuing financial prosperity generates much extra happiness for individuals or for nations. Second, by blindly pursuing economic growth, we are creating a whole set of social and environmental issues that will undermine the potential happiness and well-being of future generations.
Nic Marks
Entrepreneurs are selected to be just doers, not thinkers, and doers do, they don't talk.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb
The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds....
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
At the Harvard Symposium for Hard Problems in Social Science , Emily Osterpresented a very simple, elementary problem: almost all people with type-2diabetes who are overweight can be cured by losing a little bit of weight. They aremade aware of it, yet they usually gain weight a�er diagnosis (she mentioned"Atkins" among the options, so it was not just AMA low-fat.). It is so obvious thatwe know what to do yet do not carry the action because thinking can be largelyornamental. The proof of the sterility of (a significant class of) knowledgesterility of (a significant class of) knowledge was rightthere (among the obvious evidence that the population has been gaining weight inspire of technological and educational progress). Yet the others social scientistskept exalting the value of "education" in spite of this simple devastating evidence.Someone even suggested teaching more "critical thinking". This is the great suckerproblem: people who teach truly think that teaching, or, worse, preaching, cures.
Nassim Taleb
Know how to rank your beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
To bankrupt a fool, give him information.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Being a hero is the easiest way to meet a bullet with your name on it.
David Kendall
One's feelings waste themselves in words they ought all to be distilled into action ... which bring results.
Florence Nightingale
Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Men who leave their mark on the world are very often those who, being gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore within a measurable distance of insanity.
Francis Galton
Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market alow you to put there.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb