Statistics Quotes

• Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

  Mark Twain

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Stubborn

  80 Copy quote

• The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard.

  John Tukey

  Play, Backyards, Analytics

  123 Copy quote

• Whether statistics be an art or a science... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.

  Adolphe Quetelet

  Art, Science, Political

  9 Copy quote

• Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.

  Zig Ziglar

  Loyalty, Business, Educational

  "Smarter Branding Without Breaking the Bank: Five Proven Marketing Strategies You Can Use Right Now to Build Your Business at Little Or No Cost". Book by Brenda Bence (p. 91), November 7, 2011.

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• Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

  Evan Esar

  Science, Math, Experts

  Esar's Comic Dictionary

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  If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.

  Paul Harvey

  Chance, Maths Funny, Ten

  Paul Harvey News, 1979

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• Declare the past,
  diagnose the present,
  foretell the future.

  Hippocrates

  Moving On, Moving Forward, Past

  Epidemics

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• The opposition has moved from a blaming the victim to blaming the victim's advocate's statistics. Irrespective of what the numbers are, it's far too many.

  Patricia Ireland

  Numbers, Blame, Victim

  7 Copy quote

• If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Education, Numbers, Typewriters

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile”, p.1504, Random House

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• Fairy tales lie just as much as statistics do, but sometimes you can find a grain of truth in them.

  Sergei Lukyanenko

  Lying, Fairy Tale, Sometimes

  8 Copy quote

• Have you noticed that all the news, statistics, strategies about unemployment are provided by those who are employed? As soon as you are unemployed you cease to exist.

  Dale Spender

  Unemployment, News, Strategy

  7 Copy quote

• Before the curse of statistics fell upon mankind we lived a happy, innocent life, full of merriment and go and informed by fairly good judgment.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Assessment, Judgment, Innocent

  The Silence of the Sea On Statistics (p. 171)

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• Forget the statistics...we have to do more. You cannot look these children in the eye and see how desperate is their situation without wanting to help.

  Liam Neeson

  Children, Eye, Looks

  6 Copy quote

• Americans know very little about social statistics, but I am not sure that it's important that Americans know about social statistics.

  Milton Friedman

  Important, Littles, Social

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Statistics are like bikinis-they show a lot but not everything.

  Lou Piniella

  Sports, Bikinis, Shows

  26 Copy quote

• The Mean Value Theorem is the midwife of calculus - not very important or glamorous by itself, but often helping to deliver other theorems that are of major significance.

  Edward Mills Purcell

  Education, Mean, Important

  11 Copy quote
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  Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

  Vin Scully

  Illumination, Drunk, Support

  116 Copy quote

• People, alas, are more impressed by statistics than they are by ideas.

  Margaret Millar

  Data, Ideas, People

  Margaret Millar (2016). “A Stranger in My Grave”, p.116, Soho Press

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• No matter what the statistics say there is always a way.

  Bernie Siegel

  Matter, Way, No Matter What

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• One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Wife, Found, Matrimony

  9 Copy quote

• Statistics is the art of lying by means of figures.

  Wilhelm Stekel

  Art, Lying, Mean

  Marriage at the Crossroads Chapter II (p. 20)

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• Statistics may be defined as "a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty.

  W. Allen Wallis

  Wise, Decision, Body

  52 Copy quote

• Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.

  Enrico Fermi

  Confused, Lectures, Levels

  75 Copy quote

• In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating statistics we generally have an opposite inclination to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled.

  John Allen Paulos

  Order, Opposites, Listening

  "Data Storytelling: The Essential Data Science Skill Everyone Needs" by Brent Dykes, www.forbes.com. March 31, 2016.

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• Statistics and numbers are no good unless you have good people to analyse and then interpret their meaning and importance.

  Brendan Rodgers

  Numbers, People, Importance

  Source: bleacherreport.com

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