Statistician Quotes

Milton Friedman

Francis Galton

Ronald Fisher

Hans Rosling

Jerzy Neyman

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nate Silver

Hindsight supplements foresight: A view backward often adds materially to a view forward.

Walter A. Shewhart

A problem of statistical inference or, more simply, a statistics problem is a problem in which data that have been generated in accordance with some unknown probability distribution must be analyzed and some type of inference about the unknown distribution must be made.

Morris H. DeGroot

Years ago a statistician might have claimed that statistics deals with the processing of data... to-days statistician will be more likely to say that statistics is concerned with decision making in the face of uncertainty.

Herman Chernoff

Statistics may be defined as the discipline concerned with the treatment of numerical data derived from groups of individuals.

Only the strongest players can swim in the shark-infested waters of the Masters' Seas.

Victor Niederhoffer

When a possibility is unfamiliar to us, we do not even think about it.

A useful property of a test of significance is that it exerts a sobering influence on the type of experimenter who jumps to conclusions on scanty data, and who might otherwise try to make everyone excited about some sensational treatment effect that can well be ascribed to the ordinary variation in his experiment.

Gertrude Mary Cox

An observation with an abnormally large residual will be referred to as an outlier. Other terms in English are "wild", "straggler", "sport" and "maverick"; one may also speak of a "discordant", "anomalous" or "aberrant" observation.

Too often, in many fields of science, the statistician is regarded as someone who comes on stage after data have been collected, performs standard calculations, delivers a verdict "Significant" or "Not Significant", and then departs.

If mathematics is a game, there is no reason why people should play it if they do not want to. With football, it belongs to those amusements without which life would be endurable.

Lancelot Hogben

Italy is, after France and perhaps in the same degree, the land in which love of country has the deepest roots in the hearts of its inhabitants. The fact is that perhaps nowhere else has nature been so prodigal with its enchantments and seductions. Therefore, although Italy has been, since the fall of the Caesars, the object of European covetousness, the eternal battlefield of powerful neighbors, and the theatre of the fiercest and most prolonged civil wars, her children have always refused to leave her. Save for some commercial colonies hastily thrown upon the shores of Asia by Genoa and Venice, history has not, in fact, recorded in Italy any important outward movement of population.

A time series is a sequence of observations, usually ordered in time, although in some cases the ordering may be according to another dimension. The feature of time series analysis which distinguishes it from other statistical analysis is the explicit recognition of the importance of the order in which the observations are made. While in many problems the observations are statistically independent, in time series successive observations may be dependent, and the dependence may depend on the positions in the sequence. The nature of a series and the structure of its generating process also may involve in other ways the sequence in which the observations are taken.

Theodore Wilbur Anderson

Never ask a trader if he is profitable: you can easily see it in his gesture and gait.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

All models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind...

George E. P. Box

I am not altogether facetious in suggesting that, while non-Bayesians should make it clear in their writings whether they are non-Bayesian Orthodox or non-Bayesian Fisherian, Bayesians should also take care to distinguish their various denominations of Bayesian Epistemologists, Bayesian Orthodox, and Bayesian Savage.

A mature science, with respect to the matter of errors in variables, is not one that measures its variables without error, for this is impossible. It is, rather, a science which properly manages its errors, controlling their magnitudes and correctly calculating their implications for substantive conclusions.

Otis Dudley Duncan

Since the statistician can seldom or never make experiments for himself, he has to accept the data of daily experiences, and discuss as best he can the relations of a whole group of changes.

I would never encourage my children to be athletes - first because my children are not athletes and second because there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate.

The variability of human beings in their illnesses and their reactions to them is a fundamental reason f or the planned clinical trial and not against it.

Austin Bradford Hill

The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.

The most notable difference (of the American character) lies in the psychology of work. In the Orient one works to live; in Europe one works to consume; in America one works to work. These are the three stages of a progressive evolution.

The process of evolution on this earth, so far as we can judge, has been carried out neither with intelligence nor truth, but entirely through the routine of various sequences, commonly called "laws," established or necessitated we know not how.

Great numbers and the averages resulting from them, such as we always obtain in measuring social phenomena, have great inertia.

Arthur Lyon Bowley

A statistician is usually either right or wrong.

Wesley Clair Mitchell

I have learned repeatedly, however, that the typical behavioral scientist approaches applied statistics with considerable uncertainty (if not actual nervousness), and requires a verbal-intuitive exposition, rich in redundancy and with many concrete illustrations.

Jacob Cohen (statistician)