If you torture the data long enough nature will confess. Statistics can be made to prove anything - even the truth. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. Wells, The Undying Fire, "Chapter the First: The Prologue in Heaven," 1919 Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting Scripture. Now the man in the street knows nothing of Biometrika: all he knows is that "you can prove anything by figures," though he forgets this the moment figures are used to prove anything he wants to believe. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The secret of their power is their insensibility to blows tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh with a platitude. A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. We have an abundance of "statistics of crime," but no statistics of virtue. There is room here only to caution the reader with a general rule of thumb: Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say. Dorsey, Young Low, 1917įacts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. Old sayings may be as bad as statistics - they seem to prove almost anything. ~Paul Brodeur, Outrageous Misconduct: The Asbestos Industry on Trial, 1985 ~Author unknownĪs someone once said, however, statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off. Ah well, enjoy the quotes! –ღTerriĩ8% of all statistics are made up. But if you've intentionally come to this page, you already know that. So it's one of those things you've got to use responsibly if you're the one with the figures, and approach warily if you're the one consuming. I completed two years of upper-division stat courses at university, and - even though I doubt it was the professor's intent - the most lasting thing I learned was exactly what they say, that you can make numbers say anything. Welcome to my page of quotations about statistics.
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