Variability Quotes

• Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.

  William Osler

  Life, Health, Law

  William Osler (1927). “Aequanimitas”, p.189, Ravenio Books

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• Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Thinking, Volatility, Stability

  "The Tavis Smiley Show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. December 3, 2012.

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• Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Comfort, Needs, Too Much

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art.

  William Osler

  Art, Medicine, Might

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• Never, never, never think - that's one lesson you should have in life. Never think that lack of variability is stability.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Thinking, Should Have, Lessons

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of mercury in a barometer, indicate little else than the variability of the weather.

  David Hare

  Change, Weather, Littles

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• Impermanence is not something to be afraid of. It's the evolution, a never-ending horizon.

  Deepak Chopra

  Horizon, Evolution, Volatility

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• Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem".

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Spiritual, Women, Long

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• The grand points in human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is in expression, not in feature.

  Herman Melville

  Expression, Years, Human Nature

  Herman Melville (1988). “The Confidence-man: His Masquerade”, p.464, Northwestern University Press

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• Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Ideas, Fixing Things, Dose

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• There are various non-statistical tools that have been typically developed by lean companies, notably by Toyota for minimizing variability in production, such as standardization, introduction of takt time, synchronization, shortening the total production lead time which I am fond of referring to as non statistical tools.

  Masaaki Imai

  Tools, Introduction, Toyota

  Source: blog.deming.org

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• That the variability of an organism to a certain extent is a constant and certain condition of life we admit, otherwise there would be no distinguishable individuals of a species.

  Richard Owen

  Would Be, Individual, Certain

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• Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change.

  Judith Curry

  Data, Support, Climate

  "Overlooked evidence - global warming may proceed faster than expected" by Dana Nuccitelli, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2015.

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• Cultural diversity and cultural change are desirable and inevitable. We are cultural animals, someone without a culture is not human. But the cultures we possess vary enormously. Indeed, the variability, over time and space is the great evolutionary advantage of humanity. Instead of changing biologically over millennia, human beings can change culturally over decades

  Martin Wolf

  Animal, Space, Diversity

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• The statistical method is required in the interpretation of figures which are at the mercy of numerous influences, and its object is to determine whether individual influences can be isolated and their effects measured. The essence of the method lies in the determination that we are really comparing like with like, and that we have not overlooked a relevant factor which is present in Group A and absent from Group B. The variability of human beings in their illnesses and in their reactions to them is a fundamental reason for the planned clinical trial and not against it.

  Austin Bradford Hill

  Determination, Lying, Science

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• When an investor focuses on short-term investments, he or she is observing the variability of the portfolio, not the returns - in short, being fooled by randomness.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Investing, Return, Portfolios

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• On average, 90 percent of the variability of returns and 100 percent of the absolute level of return is explained by asset allocation.

  Roger G. Ibbotson

  Average, Investing, Levels

  "Does Asset Allocation Policy Explain 40%, 90% or 100% of Performance?". Study by Roger G. Ibbotson and Paul D. Kaplan, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 1998, revised April 1999.

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• I think the impacts of 9/11 on academic freedom vary greatly depending on locale and time (softening with the passage of time), and even within the same community, and likely within the same schools. This variability makes it difficult to offer generalized responses without accompanying caveats.

  Richard A. Falk

  School, Thinking, Impact

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The reduced variability of small populations is not always due to accidental gene loss, but sometimes to the fact that the entire population was started by a single pair or by a single fertilized female. These 'founders' of the population carried with them only a very small proportion of the variability of the parent population. This 'founder' principle sometimes explains even the uniformity of rather large populations, particularly if they are well isolated and near the borders of the range of the species.

  Ernst Mayr

  Loss, Science, Parent

  Ernst Mayr (1942). “Systematics and the Origin of Species, from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist”, p.237, Harvard University Press

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• The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for the last decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slow down in the growth rate of net climate forcing.

  James Hansen

  Mean, Years, Growth

  "Global Temperature Update Through 2012" by James Hansen, M. Sato and R. Ruedy, January 15, 2013.

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• It has become very difficult for anyone to argue that observed global warming is natural variability. We have good reason for being able to say that the world will be warmer by about a quarter of a degree in the next decade. It's the same reason we had 10 years ago when we said that the 1990s would be warmer than the 1980s: The planet is out of equilibrium.

  James Hansen

  Years, Degrees, Would Be

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• Our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change. The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year [2011] can each be attributed to climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.

  James Hansen

  Morning, Jobs, Past

  "NASA scientist links climate change, extreme weather", www.cnn.com. August 6, 2012.

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• When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity. The greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.

  Jacques Barzun

  Mind, Computer, Capacity

  "A Stroll with William James". Book by Jacques Barzun, 1983.

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• Nature will eventually do what nature has always done. It will respond in a self-stabilizing manner over the long term with moderate variability over multi-decade periods and with occasional significant variability over the short term.

  John H. Sununu

  Self, Long, Done

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• "Risk means more things can happen than will happen." It is not standard deviation. It is not variability. It is this sense that the future events are highly variable and unknowable that gives us the best sense for risk.

  Elroy Dimson

  Mean, Giving, Risk

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