Ronald Fisher Quotes

46 Sourced Quotes

This rather tumultuous overflow of statistical techniques from the quiet backwaters of theoretical methodology... into the working part of going concerns of the largest size, suggest that hidden causes have been at work... preparing men's minds, and shaping the institutions through which they work.

Ronald Fisher
More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.

Ronald Fisher
The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.

Ronald Fisher
No practical biologist interested in sexual reproduction would be led to work out the detailed consequences experienced by organisms having three or more sexes; yet what else should he do if he wishes to understand why the sexes are, in fact, always two?

Ronald Fisher
We may consequently state the fundamental theorem of Natural Selection in the form : The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time.

Ronald Fisher
In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research. By temperament and training, the research worker is the antithesis of the pundit. What he is actively and constantly aware of is his ignorance, not his knowledge; the insufficiency of his concepts, of the terms and phrases in which he tries to excogitate his problems: not their final and exhaustive sufficiency. He is, therefore, usually only a good teacher for the few who wish to use their mind as a workshop, rather than a warehouse.

Ronald Fisher
The precise specification of our knowledge is, however, the same as the precise specification of our ignorance.

Ronald Fisher
Statistical procedure and experimental design are only two different aspects of the same whole, and that whole is the logical requirements of the complete process of adding to natural knowledge by experimentation.

Ronald Fisher
The types of mind which result from training in mathematics and in biology certainly differ profoundly; but the difference does not seem to lie in the intellectual faculty.

Ronald Fisher
No human mind is capable of grasping in its entirety the meaning of any considerable quantity of numerical data.

Ronald Fisher
We have the duty of formulating, of summarizing, and of communicating our conclusions, in intelligible form, in recognition of the right of other free minds to utilize them in making their own decisions.

Ronald Fisher
The effects of chance are the most accurately calculable, and therefore the least doubtful of all the factors of an evolutionary situation.

Ronald Fisher
No isolated experiment, however significant in itself, can suffice for the experimental demonstration of any natural phenomenon; for the 'one chance in a million' will undoubtedly occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however surprised we may be that it should occur to us.

Ronald Fisher
It was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence, rather than their occurrence, which becomes highly improbable.

Ronald Fisher
The preliminary examination of most data is facilitated by the use of diagrams. Diagrams prove nothing, but bring outstanding features readily to the eye; they are therefore no substitutes for such critical tests as may be applied to the data, but are valuable in suggesting such tests, and in explaining the conclusions founded upon them.

Ronald Fisher
The phrase "Errors of the Second Kind", although apparently only a harmless piece of technical jargon, is useful as indicating the type of mental confusion in which it was coined.

Ronald Fisher
There is no more pressing need in connection with the examination of experimental results than to test whether a given body of data is or is not in agreement with any suggested hypothesis.

Ronald Fisher
We can set no limit to human potentialities; all that is best in man can be bettered... The ordinary social reformer sets out with a belief that no environment can be too good for humanity; it is without contradicting this that the eugenist may add that man can never be too good for his environment.

Ronald Fisher
In the original sense of the word, "statistics" was the science of Statecraft: to the political arithmetician of the eighteenth century, its function was to be the eyes and ears of the central government.

Ronald Fisher
Our view... Is that it is an essential characteristic of experimentation that it is carried out with limited resources, and an essential part of the subject of experimental design to ascertain how these should be best applied; or, in particular, to which causes of disturbance care should be given, and which ought to be deliberately ignored.

Ronald Fisher
A lady declares that by tasting a cup of tea made with milk she can discriminate whether the milk or the tea infusion was first added to the cup. We will consider the problem of designating an experiment by means of which this assertion can be tested.

Ronald Fisher
The postulate of randomness thus resolves itself into the question, "of what population is this a random sample?" which must frequently be asked by every practical statistician.

Ronald Fisher
Although no explanation can be expected to be satisfactory, it remains a possibility among others that Mendel was deceived by some assistant who knew too well what was expected. This possibility is supported by independent evidence that the data of most, if not all, of the experiments have been falsified so as to agree closely with Mendel's expectations.

Ronald Fisher
To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a postmortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of.

Ronald Fisher
… the best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments, which seems to be equally true in the intellectual and in the moral sense.

Ronald Fisher
The neutral zone of selective advantage in the neighbourhood of zero is thus so narrow that changes in the environment, and in the genetic constitution of species, must cause this zone to be crossed and perhaps recrossed relatively rapidly in the course of evolutionary change, so that many possible gene substitutions may have a fluctuating history of advance and regression before the final balance of selective advantage is determined.

Ronald Fisher
There is, then, in this analysis of variance no indication of any other than innate and heritable factors at work. (Coining of the phrase 'analysis of variance'.)

Ronald Fisher
I believe that no one who is familiar, either with mathematical advances in other fields, or with the range of special biological conditions to be considered, would ever conceive that everything could be summed up in a single mathematical formula, however complex.

Ronald Fisher
The million, million, million … to one chance happens once in a million, million, million … times no matter how surprised we may be that it results in us.

Ronald Fisher
… the so-called co-efficient of heritability, which I regard as one of those unfortunate short-cuts, which have often emerged in biometry for lack of a more thorough analysis of the data.

Ronald Fisher