“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”
― Mark Twain (1835–1910)
“I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!”
― Richard Feynman (1918-1988)
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.”
― E.M. Forster (1879-1970)
“If your experiment needs a statistician, you need a better experiment.”
― Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937)
“99 percent of all statistics only tell 49 percent of the story.”
― Ron DeLegge II
“Whenever I read statistical reports, I try to imagine my unfortunate contemporary, the Average Person, who, according to these reports, has 0.66 children, 0.032 cars, and 0.046 TVs.”
― Kató Lomb (1909-2003)
“Statistics, likelihoods, and probabilities mean everything to men, nothing to God.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich
“Abstain from reading comedy or other government economic statistics.”
― Jarod Kintz
“Many a statistic is false on its face. It gets by only because the magic of numbers brings about a suspension of common sense.”
― Darrell Huff (1913-2001)
“One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.”
― Thomas Sowell
“Statistics lie. They are designed to sway opinions. Take the time to keep yourself informed on things that matter.”
― Steve Maraboli
“Convincing - and confident - disciplines, say, physics, tend to use little statistical backup, while political science and economics, which have never produced anything of note, are full of elaborate statistics and statistical “evidence” (and you know that once you remove the smoke, the evidence is not evidence).”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb