Quotes by Statisticians

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Nate Silver
To bankrupt a fool, give him information.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.
E. E. Schumacher
I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.
Florence Nightingale
I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.
Florence Nightingale
The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
Florence Nightingale
I could prove God statistically.
George Gallup
One's feelings waste themselves in words they ought all to be distilled into action ... which bring results.
Florence Nightingale
Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.
Robert S. Lund
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
Florence Nightingale
A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change not destruction which takes place.
Florence Nightingale
Were there none who were discontented with what they have the world would never reach anything better.
Florence Nightingale
If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers.
Edward R. Tufte
Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.
Florence Nightingale
. . . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause of more events (say, people buy a book because other people bought it), thus generating snowballs and arbitrary and unpredictable planet-wide winner-take-all effects.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Luck is the grand equalizer.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful
George E.P. Box
...it would not be quite right to say that the problem is unsolvable in principle; only so complicated that it is not worth anybody’s time to think about it. So what do we do?In probability theory there is a very clever trick for handling a problem that becomes too difficult. We just solve it anyway by:(1)  making it still harder;(2)  redefining what we mean by ‘solving’ it, so that it becomes something we can do;(3)  inventing a dignified and technical-sounding word to describe this procedure, which has the psychological effect of concealing the real nature of what we have done, and making it appear respectable.
E. T. Jaynes
The person you're most afraid to contradict is yourself.
Nassim Taleb
Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
...the ratings agencies' problem was in being unable or uninterested in appreciating the distinction between risk and uncertainty.
Nate Silver
We see the world as less random than it actually is.
Nassim Taleb
Being a hero is the easiest way to meet a bullet with your name on it.
David Kendall
Most info-Web-media-newspaper types have a hard time swallowing the idea that knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from peoples heads
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Men who leave their mark on the world are very often those who, being gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore within a measurable distance of insanity.
Francis Galton
If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Know how to rank your beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free
Nassim Nicholas Taleb