Probability Quotes - Page 15

• An executive might have a very strong intuition that a given product has promise, without considering the probability that a rival is already ahead in developing the same product.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Strong, Promise, Intuition

  "Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut?". Interview with Olivier Sibony and Dan Lovallo, www.mckinsey.com. March 2010.

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• We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty.

  Nate Silver

  Marketing, Comfortable, Uncertainty

  Nate Silver (2012). “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't”, p.20, Penguin

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• The Three Theorems of Psychohistorical Quantitivity: The population under scrutiny is oblivious to the existence of the science of Psychohistory. The time periods dealt with are in the region of 3 generations. The population must be in the billions (±75 billions) for a statistical probability to have a psychohistorical validity.

  Isaac Asimov

  Population, Three, Generations

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• If you sat with a pencil and jotted down all the decisions you've taken in the past week, or, if you could, over your lifetime, you would realize that almost all of them have had asymmetric payoff, with one side carrying a larger consequence than the other. You decide principally based on fragility, not probability. Or to rephrase, You decide principally based on fragility, not so much on True/False.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Taken, Past, Decision

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• In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple days of hopelessness. Future scientists will call it the Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case history of chasing rainbows.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Couple, Best Effort, Chasing Rainbows

  "Damned". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, 2011.

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• There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent.

  Richard Dawkins

  Reason, Consideration, Existence

  Richard Dawkins (2008). “The God Delusion”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

  H. L. Mencken

  Strong, Fake, Support

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.80, Knopf

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• All knowledge resolves itself into probability. ... In every judgment, which we can form concerning probability, as well as concerning knowledge, we ought always to correct the first judgment deriv'd from the nature of the object, by another judgment, deriv'd from the nature of the understanding.

  David Hume

  Knowledge, Science, Understanding

  David Hume (2003). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.130, Courier Corporation

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• Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage. Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered - one does not usually lead to the other - but it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the 20th century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed.

  Daniel D. Polsby

  Gun, Reality, Government

  "Armed against genocide" by Glenn Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. March 20, 2006.

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• Contrary to the popular notion that only creationism relies on the supernatural, evolutionism must as well, since the probabilities of random formation of life are so tiny as to require a 'miracle' for spontaneous generation tantamount to a theological argument.

  Chandra Wickramasinghe

  Miracle, Tiny, Generations

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• A further aspect I should like to discuss is what I call the practice of infinite escape clauses. I believe we developed this practice to avoid facing the conclusion that the probability of self-reproducing state is zero. This is what we must conclude from classical quantum mechanical principles as Wigner demonstrated

  Sidney W. Fox

  Zero, Believe, Self

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• The probability for the chance of formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 to 10340,000,000.... The size of this figure is truly staggering, since there are only supposed to be approximately 10 electrons in the whole universe!

  Harold Morowitz

  Size, Chance, Evolution

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• The office of science is not to record possibilities; but to ascertain what nature does ... As far as Darwinism deals with mere arguments of possibilities or even probabilities, without a basis of fact, it departs from the true scientific method and injures science, as most of the devotees of the new ism have already done.

  Louis Agassiz

  Nature, Science, Office

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• Life cannot have had a random beginning. ... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the 40,000 power, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.

  Fred Hoyle

  Two, Trials, Enzymes

  "Evolution from Space". Book by Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle, 1981.

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• Saudi Arabian oil production is at or very near its peak sustainable volume (if it did not, in fact peak almost 25 years ago), and is likely to go into decline in the very foreseeable future. There is only a small probability that Saudi Arabia will ever deliver the quantities of petroleum that are assigned to it in all the major forecasts of world oil production and consumption.

  Matthew Simmons

  Years, Oil, Saudi Arabia

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• We are not good at recognizing distant threats even if their probability is 100%. Society ignoring [peak oil] is like the people of Pompeii ignoring the rumblings below Vesuvius.

  James R. Schlesinger

  Oil, People, Pompeii

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• Further, the same Arguments which explode the Notion of Luck, may, on the other side, be useful in some Cases to establish a due comparison between Chance and Design: We may imagine Chance and Design to be, as it were, in Competition with each other, for the production of some sorts of Events, and may calculate what Probability there is, that those Events should be rather be owing to the one than to the other.

  Abraham de Moivre

  Science, Design, Competition

  "The Doctrine of Chances: Or, A Method of Calculating the Probabilities of Events in Play".

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• The most important thing you can do individually and organizationally is to pay attention to your own creativity. Sports psychologists call this muscle memory or paying attention to your perfect performance. In your own life you can notice when you do something that works right for you and celebrate it. The more you do this, the greater the probability that you will act creatively in future situations.

  Michael Ray

  Sports, Memories, Creativity

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• The greatest threat now is a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities...there's a high probability of such an attempt.

  Dick Cheney

  Cities, Groups, Nuclear

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• Some reasonable term ought to be allowed to enable aliens to get rid of foreign and acquire American attachments; to learn the principles and imbibe the spirit of our government; and to admit of a probability at least, of their feeling a real interest in our affairs.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Real, Government, Attachment

  Alexander Hamilton (1851). “The works of Alexander Hamilton: containing his correspondence, and his political and official writings, exclusive of the Federalist, civil and military”, p.776

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• If that's true and the rate stays like that for another 40 years, there's a good probability that somebody who is active in the credit economy for that period of time might be a victim. But that's not a given.

  Keith Anderson

  Years, Credit, Might

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• I am genuinely sorry for scientists of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he, like the Cambridge mathematician J. E. Littlewood, loved to drink in the evening. And on the credit side you gained a cherished memory of English spoken in a Shakespearean style and delivered in the manner of a Spanish grandee.

  Fred Hoyle

  Sorry, Memories, Wrath

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• And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against the grain of logic and probability. When I have trusted and followed their direction, they have never been wrong. I don't know how or why. But I know that every significant experience-positive or negative-sharpens them and makes them more accurate.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Believe, Negative, Genius

  Augusten Burroughs (2012). “This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.”, p.151, Macmillan

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• The prospect, that a good general government will in all human probability be soon established in America, affords me more substantial satisfaction; than I have ever before derived from any political event. Because there is a rational ground for believing that not only the happiness of my own countrymen, but that of mankind in general, will be promoted by it.

  George Washington

  Believe, America, Government

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1835). “The Writings of George Washington: pt. III. Private letters from the time Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Army to that of his inauguration as president of the United States: December, 1783-April, 1789”, p.457

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• Statistical high Vegas odds probability is that nothing of any significance will ever happen to you in your entire boring life.

  Doug Stanhope

  Vegas, Odds, Boring

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