Probability Quotes - Page 8

• Seeking an acquisition from the start is more than just bad advice for an entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur it leads to short term tactical decisions rather than company-building decisions and in my view often reduces the probability of success.

  Vinod Khosla

  Views, Entrepreneur, Decision

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• I have found, unfortunately, that if I take on too many projects at one time, there is a higher probability of those projects sucking.

  Damon Lindelof

  Projects, Found, Higher

  "Damon Lindelof: I did not abandon ‘Prometheus 2’". uproxx.com. March 28, 2013.

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• Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals. . . must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.

  Isaac Watts

  Light, Hundred, Certainty

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• You must maximize the probability that someone shows up at front door of your store or website and ends up with a solved problem.

  Drew Houston

  Doors, Problem, Ends

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• Nearly everybody nowadays accepts the 'causal completeness of physics' - every physical event (or at least its probability) has a full physical cause. This leaves no room for non-physical things to make a causal difference to physical effects. But it would be absurd to deny that thoughts and feelings (and population movements and economic depressions . . .) cause physical effects. So they must be physical things.

  David Papineau

  Differences, Feelings, Events

  "Physical". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 8, 2013.

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• All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.

  William Butler Yeats

  Memories, Soul, Mind

  William Butler Yeats (2010). “Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.347, Simon and Schuster

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• A property in the 100-year floodplain has a 96 percent chance of being flooded in the next hundred years without global warming. The fact that several years go by without a flood does not change that probability.

  Earl Blumenauer

  Years, Doe, Next

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• The percent likelihood of a society becoming physically violent if it is physically affectionate towards its infants and tolerant of premarital sexual behavior is 2 percent. The probability of this relationship occurring by chance is 125,000 to one. I am not aware of any other developmental variable that has such a high degree of predictive validity.

  James W. Prescott

  Society, Degrees, Variables

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• So in this case, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering' - then you should abandon them.

  Gautama Buddha

  Wise, Teacher, Buddhist

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• No matter how slick the demo is in rehearsal, when you do it in front of a live audience the probability of a flawless presentation is inversely proportional to the number of people watching, raised to the power of the amount of money involved.

  Mark Gibbs

  Technology, Numbers, People

  "The myth of the digital lifestyle" by Mark Gibbs, www.networkworld.com. January 9, 2006.

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• If in a discussion of many matters ... we are not able to give perfectly exact and self-consistent accounts, do not be surprised: rather we would be content if we provide accounts that are second to none in probability.

  Plato

  Science, Self, Giving

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• Everybody knows you're going to miss some. It's just the reality and the probability of it. It's the ultimate paradox for a kicker. You go out expecting to make every kick, but you also know it's probably not going to happen. So you have these two conflicting thoughts and realities. The really good kickers are the ones who can process that information. That's what I'm learning to do.

  Nate Kaeding

  Reality, Two, Missing

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• Such an event is probable in Agathon's sense of the word: 'it is probable,' he says, 'that many things should happen contrary to probability.'

  Aristotle

  Events, Statistics, Should

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.473, Simon and Schuster

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• It was our use of probability theory as logic that has enabled us to do so easily what was impossible for those who thought of probability as a physical phenomenon associated with "randomness". Quite the opposite; we have thought of probability distributions as carriers of information.

  Edwin Thompson Jaynes

  Opposites, Probability Theory, Use

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• If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.

  William James

  Men, Statistics, Claims

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.304, Library of America

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• The province of faith begins where probabilities cease and sight and sense fail.

  George Muller

  Sight, Failing, Provinces

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• It is impossible for a Die, with such determined force and direction which makes it fall on such a determined side, only I don't know the force and direction which makes it fall on such a determin'd side, and therefore I call that Chance, which is nothing, but want of Art.

  John Arbuthnot

  Art, Fall, Science

  "The Miscellaneous Works of the Late Dr. Arbuthnot".

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• If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Giving, Fundamentals, Way

  "THE SIMPLE AND THE COMPLEX Part I: THE QUANTUM AND THE QUASI-CLASSICAL with MURRAY GELL-MANN, Ph.D". Interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, www.intuitionnetwork.org.

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• Protein synthesis is a central problem for the whole of biology, and that it is in all probability closely related to gene action.

  Francis Crick

  Science, Synthesis, Action

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• Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.

  Ian Hacking

  Opinion, Medieval, Companion

  Ian Hacking (2006). “The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference”, p.55, Cambridge University Press

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• Scientists are stuck in this belief that we tell people probabilities, not absolute answers.

  Stephen Schneider

  People, Answers, Belief

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• He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.

  Samuel Johnson

  Journey, Choices, Too Much

  Samuel Johnson (1793). “The Rambler”, p.304

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• The artist reserves the right to remove a blot on the landscape, to change positions of things, to suit his composition, providing only that he does not transgress the laws of probability.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Artist, Law, Doe

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• I'm a pessimist about probabilities, I'm an optimist about possibilities.

  Lewis Mumford

  Optimism, Possibility, Pessimist

  "Lewis Mumford Remembers". The New York Times, July 6, 1977.

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• We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.

  Jeffrey Kluger

  Real, Pride, Worry

  Jeffrey Kluger (2007). “Simplexity: the simple rules of a complex world”

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