Data Quotes - Page 26

• Historical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws of nature do not represent its usual working methods. The sciences of history use a different mode of explanation, rooted in the comparative and observational richness in our data. We cannot see a past event directly, but science is usually based on inference, not unvarnished observation (you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either).

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Past, Law, Black

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, p. 279, 1989.

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• Few intellectual tyrannies can be more recalcitrant than the truths that everybody knows and nearly no one can defend with any decent data (for who needs proof of anything so obvious). And few intellectual activities can be more salutary than attempts to find out whether these rocks of ages might crumble at the slightest tap of an informational hammer.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Rocks, Intellectual, Age

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Life's Grandeur: The Spread of Excellence From Plato to Darwin”, p.280, Random House

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• A rare book at once of great importance and wonderful to read.... Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny, phrenology , recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.... A major addition to the scientific literature.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Book, Racism, Historical

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• What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Reality, Thinking, Hierarchy

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• Both history and contemporary data show that countries prosper more when there are stable and dependable rules, under which people can make investments without having to fear unpredictable new government interventions before these investments can pay off.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Government, People

  "An Economic 'Plan'?". www.creators.com. September 09, 2012.

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• In the past two decades anthropologists have gathered data on life and death in pre-state societies rather than accepting the warm and fuzzy stereotypes. What did they find? In a nutshell: Hobbes was right, Rousseau was wrong.

  Steven Pinker

  Past, Two, Life And Death

  "The Blank Slate". Book by Steven Pinker, 2002.

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• Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.

  George Henry Lewes

  Lying, Principles, Limits

  George Henry Lewes (1874). “Problems of Life and Mind: The method of science and its application to metaphysics. The rules of philosophising. Psychological principles. The limitations of knowledge”, p.17

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• It's understandable that the music companies that are comprised of people that are successful by making good creative decisions - they have to decide which out of fifty artists is the next hot one, with no data to go from. It's an intuitive process, and that's what they do well when they're successful. They don't understand technology.

  Steve Jobs

  Successful, Artist, Technology

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• I tend to write poetry that is rich in data of various sorts. The lyric poem isn't perfectly suited to accommodating such data, so I've had to find new ways to say everything that I want to say.

  Campbell McGrath

  Writing, Want, Way

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• For me art is a continuous discovery into reality, an exploration of visual data which has been going on for centuries, each artist contributing to the next generation's advancement. I wanted to go a step further and extend the boundaries.

  Audrey Flack

  Art, Reality, Discovery

  Audrey Flack, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Hills, Frederick S. Wight Art Gallery (1992). “Breaking the rules: Audrey Flack, a retrospective 1950-1990”, Harry N Abrams Inc

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• A data scientist is that unique blend of skills that can both unlock the insights of data and tell a fantastic story via the data.

  DJ Patil

  Unique, Skills, Stories

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• Size doesn't matter, fast data is better than big data

  Hilary Mason

  Matter, Size, Bigs

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• What got repressed-sometimes viciously repressed-by the strategy-concept makers, consultants, and data gatherers was a consciousness of people and their importance in the creation and execution of any strategy.

  Walter Kiechel

  People, Execution, Sometimes

  Walter Kiechel (2013). “Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World”, p.13, Harvard Business Press

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• I've always been a bit of a mix between art and technology. I used to paint a lot, but I'm not very good with my hands. It has always been a fusion between my computer gaming interests and being exposed to the rich data of society that we live in.

  Aaron Koblin

  Art, Technology, Hands

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• I was really intrigued by the idea of using live streams of data that's relevant to real people, and that would allow us to reflect and learn about ourselves.

  Aaron Koblin

  Real, Ideas, People

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• Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.

  Alvin Toffler

  Future, Men, Outcomes

  ALVIN TOFFLER (1970). “FUTURE SHOCK”

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• Wikipedia was offline after an overheating problem at one of its data centers. It was pretty bad. For a while there, people had nowhere to go for phony, inaccurate information.

  Jay Leno

  People, Wikipedia, Information

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• We shall see that the mathematical treatment of the subject [of electricity] has been greatly developed by writers who express themselves in terms of the 'Two Fluids' theory. Their results, however, have been deduced entirely from data which can be proved by experiment, and which must therefore be true, whether we adopt the theory of two fluids or not. The experimental verification of the mathematical results therefore is no evidence for or against the peculiar doctrines of this theory.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Two, Doctrine, Peculiar

  James Clerk Maxwell (1873). “A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism”, p.38

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• You can't publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism.

  Julian Assange

  Paper, Journalism, Physics

  "‘A real free press for the first time in history’: WikiLeaks editor speaks out in London" by Joel Gunter, blogs.journalism.co.uk. July 12, 2010.

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• Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one.

  Michael Behe

  Thinking, Astrology, Facts

  "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District". Trial transcript: Day 11, www.talkorigins.org. October 18, 2005.

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• The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.

  William James

  Lying, Wish, Opaque

  William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1978). “Essays in Philosophy”, p.59, Harvard University Press

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• Data don't generate theory - only researchers do that.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Theory, Researchers

  "The Structuring of Organizations: A Synthesis of the Research". Book by Henry Mintzberg, 1979.

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• Anecdotal data is not incidental to theory development at all, but an essential part of it.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Essentials, Development, Theory

  "Managers Not MBAs". Book by Henry Mintzberg, 2005.

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• Our initial sensory data are always "first derivatives," statements about differences which exist among external objects or statements about changes which occur either in them or in our relationship to them. Objects and circumstances which remain absolutely constant relative to the observer, unchanged either by his own movement or by external events, are in general difficult and perhaps always impossible to perceive. What we perceive easily is difference and change and difference is a relationship.

  Gregory Bateson

  Differences, Events, Movement

  Jurgen Ruesch, Gregory Bateson (2006). “Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry”, p.173, Transaction Publishers

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• The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture

  Fred Brooks

  Organization, Design, Details

  "Architecture of the IBM System". IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 8, 1964.

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