Ronald Fisher Short Quotes

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Fairly large print is a real antidote to stiff reading.

Ronald Fisher
No efforts of mine could avail to make the book easy reading.

Ronald Fisher
After all, it is a common weakness of young authors to put too much into their papers.

Ronald Fisher
Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.

Ronald Fisher
[...] the uncontrolled causes which may influence the result are always strictly innumerable.

Ronald Fisher
Inductive inference is the only process known to us by which essentially new knowledge comes into the world.

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

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

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

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
… 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 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
Christian children should... be taught that faith does not mean credulity; but is a quality, very like courage, which makes one hold fast to that which is good.

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
To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of.

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
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 academic mind, as we know, is sometimes capable of assuming an aggressive attitude. The official mind, on the contrary, is and has to be, expert in the art of self-defence.

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
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
The statistician cannot excuse himself from the duty of getting his head clear on the principles of scientific inference, but equally no other thinking man can avoid a like obligation.

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
… 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
Critical tests of this kind may be called tests of significance, and when such tests are available we may discover whether a second sample is or is not significantly different from the first.

Ronald Fisher