Jittering Statistics Quotes

The true foundation of theology is to ascertain the character of God. It is by the aid of Statistics that law in the social sphere can be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of the character of God thereby revealed. The study of statistics is thus a religious service. ~ Florence Nightingale

What makes a terrorist? Are the drivers primarily political or economic? Princeton economist Alan Krueger has made a great study of this question ... What Makes a Terrorist lacks a question mark. That's because Krueger, marshaling persuasive statistics and analysis, comes down firmly on the side of politics, noting most terrorists are middle-class and well-educated. ~ Thomas P.M. Barnett

For those under the age of 45 it seemed that world events had finally contrived a meaningful test of their capacity for conscientious political thought. Many of my acquaintances, I realized, had passed the last decade or two in a state of intellectual and psychic yearning for such a moment - or, if they hadn't, were able to quickly assemble an expert arguer's arsenal of thrusts and statistics and ripostes and gambits and examples and salient facts and rhetorical maneuvers. ~ Joseph O'Neill

The only meaningful statistic in warfare is when the other side quits. ~ Karl Marlantes

Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination. ~ Vin Scully

Stories are not lists, decks, Power-Points, flip charts, lectures, pleas, instructions, regulations, manifestos, calculations, lesson plans, threats, statistics, evidence, orders, or raw facts. ~ Peter Guber

You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

Why be an average person? All the great achievements of history have been made by strong individuals who refused to consult statistics or to listen to those who could prove convincingly that what they wanted to do, and in fact ultimately did do, was completely impossible. ~ Eric Butterworth

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. ~ Mark Twain

The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the deindustrialization of the economy - a process that reached its peak during the 1980s - and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling. ~ Angela Y. Davis

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen. ~ Albert Einstein

Those meaningless and unanswerable questions the minds keep returning to, like a tongue exploring a broken tooth. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Bayesian statistics is difficult in the sense that thinking is difficult. ~ Don Berry

Statistics in the hands of activists have power. ~ Ela Bhatt

In our society competitive capitalism has put family life and working life on a collision course.In Canada statistics show that over 70 percent of the burden of caring for children, the aged, the disabled and the sick falls on women most of whom receive no pay for these very essential tasks.Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of capitalism, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and thus increase the gap between them. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

Reclaimed by the small-time day-to-day, pretending life is Back To Normal, wrapping herself shivering against contingency's winter in some threadbare blanket of first-quarter expenses, school committees, cable-bill irregularities, a workday jittering with low-life fantasies for which "fraud" is often too elegant a term, upstairs neighbors to whom bathtub caulking is an alien concept, symptoms upper-respiratory and lower-intestinal, all in the quaint belief that change will always be gradual enough to manage, with insurance, with safety equipment, with healthy diets and regular exercise, and that evil never comes roaring out of the sky to explode into anybody's towering delusions about being exempt. . . ~ Thomas Pynchon

Coincidence", he finally said. "Statisticans looking for connections can always find odd coincidences and statistical anomalies, if they try hard enough. ~ Brandon Sanderson

We measure areas of performance that are often ignored: jumping in pursuit of every rebound even if you don't get it, swatting at every pass, diving for loose balls, letting someone smash into you in order to draw the foul. These 'effort' statistics are also stored on computer. Effort is what ultimately separates journeyman players from impact players. Knowing how well a player executes all these little things is the key to unlocking career-best performances. ~ Pat Riley

I think it can be really powerful, and one of the reasons I love making films is I do feel they can reach beyond the statistics and the numbers and the complexities of a particular issue and really highlight the humanity in a way that an article or newspaper story might not be able to do. ~ Rory Kennedy

Teenage drinking has been declining since 1999, but students vastly overestimate their classmates' use of alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. For example, a study conducted at a Midwestern high school when teenage alcohol use was peaking found that students believed that 92% of their peers Frank alcohol and 85% smoked cigarettes. When researchers surveyed the school to unearth the actual statistics, they learned that 47% of students had consumed alcohol and 17% smoked. ~ Alexandra Robbins

I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks. ~ Thomas A. Edison

I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding. ~ James Boswell

That was probably the reason that history was more of an oracle than a science. Perhaps later, muck later, it would be taught by means of tables of statistics, supplemented by anatomical sections. The teacher would draw on the blackboard an algebraic formula representing the conditions of life of the masses of a particular nation at a particular period: 'Here, citizens, you see the objective factors which conditioned this historical process. ~ Arthur Koestler

I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as, roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything. ~ Lars Peter Hansen

There are many ways in which journalists can mislead a reader with science: they can cherry-pick the evidence, or massage the statistics; they can pit hysteria and emotion against cold, bland statements from authority figures. ~ Ben Goldacre

He is so efficient. He seems to be playing smarter, more confidently. I think they have given him more responsibility. He's very, very accurate and doesn't make many mistakes. The statistics show he has three interceptions, but in reality it's only one. The others were deflected passes by receivers who should have caught balls. ~ Pat Haden

To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose. ~ Florence Nightingale

Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on. ~ Karen Elizabeth Gordon

I really don't care much about baseball, or looking at ball games, major or minor. All my interest in baseball is in its statistics. ~ Ernest Lanigan

You can never compare a stadium full of people to statistics online ... There's something about seeing people's faces, and it's amazing [seeing how] things online can also be translated offline. ~ Lilly Singh

One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. ~ Rita Mae Brown

Remember a person with Autism isn't a set of symptoms or statistics always remember and remind them that they're a person first. ~ Paul Isaacs

In the interest of ultimate honesty," Celine cut in, "I'm pretty sure that everyone present would appreciate it if you two got a room."
"I wouldn't," Dean grumbled.
"I am unbothered by displays of physical and emotional intimacy," Sloane volunteered. "The nuances and statistics underlying courtship behavior are quite fascinating."
The edges of Celine's lips quirked upward as she met Sloane's gaze. "You don't say."
Sloane frowned. "I just did. ~ Jennifer Lynn Barnes