Statistical Analysis Quotes

Among the current discussions, the impact of new and sophisticated methods in the study of the past occupies an important place. The new 'scientific' or 'cliometric' history-born of the marriage contracted between historical problems and advanced statistical analysis, with economic theory as bridesmaid and the computer as best man-has made tremendous advances in the last generation. ~ Robert Fogel

Lorenz was the charismatic, flamboyant thinker - he didn't conduct a single statistical analysis in his life - while Tinbergen did the nitty-gritty of actual data collection. ~ Frans De Waal

For instance, a new kind of rich person named John Henry bought the Florida Marlins in January 1999. Most baseball owners were either heirs, or empire builders of one sort or another, or both. Henry had made his money in the intelligent end of the financial markets. He had an instinctive feel for the way statistical analysis could turn up inefficiencies in human affairs. Inefficiencies in the financial markets had made Henry a billionaire - and he saw some familiar idiocies in the market for baseball players. ~ Anonymous

If we had enough data then this statistical approach would undoubtedly sort out these things, and a lot of problems are arising precisely because we haven't got enough documents for the statistical approach to be wholly valid. I know you can calculate levels of probability and so forth, but to establish this really clearly we want a lot more information than we have actually got available. This is surely our major problem that we are still at the very limits at which you can use a technique of this sort. - John Chadwick ~ Jennifer K. McArthur

Science of yoga and ayurveda is subtler than the science of medicine, because science of medicine is often victim of statistical manipulation. ~ Amit Ray

Computerized medical records will enable statistical analysis to be used to determine which treatments are most effective. ~ Temple Grandin

The trial designed to bring the most rigorous statistical analysis to the cause of lung cancer barely required elementary mathematics to prove its point. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

The early years of statistical development were dominated by men. Many women were working in the field, but they were almost all employed in doing the detailed calculations needed for statistical analysis, and were indeed called "computers". ~ David Salsburg

Significance unfortunately is a useful means toward a personal ends in the advance of science - status and widely distributed publications, a big laboratory, a staff of research assistants, a reduction in teaching load, a better salary, the finer wines of Bordeaux. Precision, knowledge, and control. In a narrow and cynical sense statistical significance is the way to achieve these. Design experiment. Then calculate statistical significance. Publish articles showing "significant" results. Enjoy promotion.

But it is not science, and it will not last. ~ Stephen Thomas Ziliak

statistical analysis revealed that the training was responsible for the positive effects. ~ Shawn Achor

This was, he told the King, a femfatalatron, an erotifying device stochastic, elastic and orgiastic, and with plenty of feedback; whoever was placed inside the apparatus instantaneously experienced all the charms, lures, wiles, winks and witchery of all the fairer sex in the Universe at once. The femfatalatron operated on a power of forty megamors, with a maximum attainable efficiency - given a constant concupiscence coefficient - of ninety-six percent, while the system's libidinous lubricity, measured of course in kilocupids, produced up to six units for every remote-control caress. This marvelous mechanism, moreover, was equipped with reversible ardor dampers, omnidirectional consummation amplifiers, absorption philters, paphian peripherals, and "first-sight" flip-flop circuits, since Trurl held here to the position of Dr. Yentzicus, creator of the famous oculo-oscular feel theory.
There were also all sorts of auxiliary components, like a high-frequency titillizer, an alternating tantalator, plus an entire set of lecherons and debaucheraries; on the outside, in a special glass case, were enormous dials, on which one could carefully follow the course of the whole decaptivation process. Statistical analysis revealed that the femfatalatron gave positive, permanent results in ninety-eight cases of unrequited amatorial superfixation out of a hundred. ~ Stanisław Lem

When our forebears asked - What is a man? - they did not expect a detailed examination of some Saturday morning shopper, Mr. John Q. Public, snatched at random from the crowded agora and forced under a microscope or onto a psychiatrist's couch. Nor did they want a statistical analysis of some cross-section of the demos for an answer. Of what good to sound learning is a man who looks like every man but in whom no man sees himself? The only use for such analyses, as our modern era shows, is in various forms of exploitation. Statistical man makes a useful abstraction for advertisers and propagandists. ~ David V. Hicks

An invaluable little book ... What Makes a Terrorist uses standard tools of economics and statistical analysis to get at the truth about terrorism ... Krueger finds one familiar fact in all his numbers. Countries with fewer civil liberties tend to produce more terrorists. ~ Daniel Finkelstein

When you get into statistical analysis, you don't really expect to achieve fame. Or to become an Internet meme. Or be parodied by 'The Onion' - or be the subject of a cartoon in 'The New Yorker.' I guess I'm kind of an outlier there. ~ Nate Silver

From empathy and sexuality to science inclination and extroversion, statistical analysis of 122 different characteristics involving 13,301 individuals shows that men and women, by and large, do not fall into different groups. ~ Christian Rudder

No data are excluded on subjective or arbitrary grounds. No one piece of data is more highly valued than another. The consequences of this policy have to be accepted, even if they prove awkward. ~ Jennifer K. McArthur

I took a course at Cal once called Statistical Analysis. And there was a guy in the course who used to make up all of his computations and he never used Sigma. He used his own initials. 'Cause he was the standard deviation. ~ Mort Sahl

The 80/20 analysis is a statistical analysis that you can conduct to improve your sales. Research has shown that, for any given event, 80% of the outcome will be due to 20% of the cause. ~ Grant Kennedy

The aim of the research is to determine what groups can be drawn up as a result of regular association of place-names. A further step is to consider whether such groups have a geographical significance. This was accepted by Palmer as a reasonable hypothesis; Wilson argued the case for it by considering possible ways in which information to be recorded on the tablets was received by the scribes. Underlying this work is the assumption that groupings may have a geographical basis, but it has still to be shown that this is a reasonable assumption. ~ Jennifer K. McArthur

In the first case it emerges that the evidence that might refute a theory can often be unearthed only with the help of an incompatible alternative: the advice (which goes back to Newton and which is still popular today) to use alternatives only when refutations have already discredited the orthodox theory puts the cart before the horse. Also, some of the most important formal properties of a theory are found by contrast, and not by analysis. A scientist who wishes to maximize the empirical content of the views he holds and who wants to understand them as clearly as he possibly can must therefore introduce other views; that is, he must adopt a pluralistic methodology. He must compare ideas with other ideas rather than with 'experience' and he must try to improve rather than discard the views that have failed in the competition. Proceeding in this way he will retain the theories of man and cosmos that are found in Genesis, or in the Pimander, he will elaborate them and use them to measure the success of evolution and other 'modern' views. He may then discover that the theory of evolution is not as good as is generally assumed and that it must be supplemented, or entirely replaced, by an improved version of Genesis. Knowledge so conceived is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is not a gradual approach to truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each single theory, each fairy-tale, each myth ~ Paul Karl Feyerabend

This process is like starting a fitness regimen for the brain. At the beginning, your muscles burn a little. But over time and with repetition, you become stronger, and the improvements you see in yourself can be remarkable. Becoming a better thinker, just like becoming a better athlete, requires practice. We challenge you to feel the burn. ~ Sarah Miller Beebe

Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity is subjected to chemical tests. ~ James Russell Lowell

Knowledge above the average can be crammed into the average man, but it remains dead, and in the last analysis sterile knowledge. The result is a man who may be a living dictionary but nevertheless falls down miserably in all special situations and decisive moments in life. ~ Adolf Hitler

Sit comfortably, in a relaxed way, and close your eyes. As much as possible, let go of analysis and expectation. For ten to fifteen minutes, call to mind something you have done or said that you feel was a kind or good action - a time you were generous, or caring, or contributed to someone's well-being. If something comes to mind, allow the happiness that may come with the remembrance. If nothing comes to mind, gently turn your attention to a quality you like about yourself. ~ Sharon Salzberg

Before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned - the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted - nature's answer must be understood properly. These two tasks are those of the theorist, who finds himself always more and more dependent on the tools of abstract mathematics. Of course, this does not mean that the experimenter does not also engage in theoretical deliberations. The foremost classical example of a major achievement produced by such a division of labor is the creation of spectrum analysis by the joint efforts of Robert Bunsen, the experimenter, and Gustav Kirchhoff, the theorist. Since then, spectrum analysis has been continually developing and bearing ever richer fruit. ~ Max Planck

Incivility is a symptom, not the disease. We've always had partisan conflict in Congress, and we always will. Yet when I worked for a year (1970-71) on the staff of Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine, this was a different place, more collegial, more sensitive to data, more concerned about all of the American people. I think because the for-profit media prizes conflict above cooperation and sound bites above analysis, politicians have learned to adapt to those tendencies. Consequently, our public debates are dumbed down as our problems grow more complex. ~ Tom Allen

When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression. ~ Marjane Satrapi

She said, "What would you do if you left?" "I'm not sure. Get a doctorate maybe. I know some people who work in think tanks. I'd want to talk to them. Sound them out." She gave him a sour look. The term made her unhappy - think tank - and he didn't blame her. Passive, mild, middle-aged, ivory-towerish. People rustling papers in redoubts of social strategy. Situation reports, policy alternatives, statistical surveys. He ~ Don DeLillo

Classification may very well not be useless, but it is never analysis, no matter how baroquely detailed and comprehensive-seeming its categories. At best, it begs questions. At worst it is presumptuous and totalitarian, replacing understanding with filing. We have all heard papers where categories are the driving force, according to which the way we understand literature (or whatever) is to work out what title fits where, as if literary theory was a giant card-catalog. Even when the last book has been slotted neatly into the last of the holes that were cut to be filled with books, what we have are books in neat piles. Which is not nothing, but neither is it that much. ~ China Mieville

Cold-turkey deficit reduction would cause a significant recession. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that going headlong over the cliff would cause our gross domestic product, which has been growing at an annual rate of around 2 percent, to fall at a rate of 2.9 percent in the first half of 2013. ~ Christina Romer

For this reason I get impatient with people who depict Marx's dialectic as a closed method of analysis. It is not finite; on the contrary, it is constantly expanding, and here he is explaining precisely how. We only have to review what we have already experienced in reading Capital; the movement of its argument is a perpetual reshaping, rephrasing and expansion of the field of contradictions. ~ David Harvey

William Graebner's brilliant analysis of America's struggles over the meaning of Patty Hearst gives us not only new perspectives on the 1970s, on Americans' fundamental understandings of their world in a bicentennial year that offered little to celebrate, but also on the longing for heroism and the desire for belief in free will that Graebner believes structured the rise of Reagan-era conservatism. This is a masterful work of cultural history. ~ Beth Bailey

I believe that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.

In doing so, however, I have led myself around in circles and hurt myself just as deeply. I say this not as an excuse or a means of self-justification but because it is true. If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. So please try not to hate me. I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed being than you realize. Which is precisely why I do not want you to hate me. Because if you were to do that, I would really go to pieces. I can't do what you can do: I can't slip inside my shell and wait for things to pass. I don't know for a fact that you are really like that, but sometimes you give me that impression. I often envy that in you, which may be why I led you around in circles so much.

This may be an over-analytical way of looking at things. Don't you agree? The therapy they perform here is certainly not over-analytical, but when you are under treatment for several months the way I am here, like it or not, you become more or less analytical. "This was caused by that, and that means this, because of which such-and-such."

Like that. I can't tell whether this kind of analysis is trying to simplify the world or complicate it.

In any case, I myself feel that I am far closer to recovery than I once was, and people here tell me this is true. This is the first time in a long whil ~ Haruki Murakami

Training in analysis (like any other form of chess training) should be treated very seriously. ~ Mark Dvoretsky

All obvious moves look dubious in analysis after the game. ~ Viktor Korchnoi

The overthrowing of slavery, then, is through the transformation of men and women by the gospel rather than through merely changing an economic system. We've all seen what can happen when you merely overthrow an economic system and impose a new order. The whole communist dream was the have a 'revolutionary man' followed by the 'new man.' Trouble is, they never found the 'new man.' They got rid of the oppressors of the peasants, but that didn't mean the peasants were suddenly free--they were just under a new regime of darkness. In the final analysis, if you want lasting change, you've got to transform the hearts of human beings. And that was Jesus' mission. ~ Lee Strobel

[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

We need to think harder and smarter. What we really need is holistic analysis, not holistic media data. We need to make better use of what we have. We need to dig deeper and ask, 'Do you need to repeat the whole study or can you examine the bits that have changed and re-calibrate?' ~ Jenny Beck

Insomniac is an impassioned work-an inspired amalgam of academic and first-hand research, memoir, analysis, and the kind of obsessive brooding we associate with the insomniac state. Much here is fascinating, and much is upsetting; here is a cri de coeur from a lifetime insomniac that is sure to appeal to the vast army of fellow insomniacs the world over. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. ~ Hannah Arendt

[Analysis] has helped, but not as much as I've wanted. Years ago, I remember, I brought my clarinet into the repair shop, and the guy took two weeks and put new pads on and everything. When I went in, I said, 'Thank you, but am I going to sound better?' And he said, 'Yes, you will sound better, but not as much as you'd like to. ~ Woody Allen

A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror. A distinction needs to be made, as well, between (factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any other narrative of a trauma) truthful is its very factual unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her painful and humiliating experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us suspicious of its truth. ~ Slavoj Zizek

I possessed nearly five thousand volumes in my library at Rome; but after reading them over many times, I found out that with a hundred and fifty well-chosen books a man possesses a complete analysis of all human knowledge, or at least all that is either useful or desirable to be acquainted with. – Abbe Faria ~ Alexandre Dumas

Twitter can no more produce analysis than a monkey can type out a work of Shakespeare. ~ Eric Schmidt

One effect of benefit-cost analysis is to give any respectable engineer or economist a means for justifying almost any kind of project the national government wants to justify ... Exclusive reliance on benefit-cost analysis has been one of the greatest threats to wise decisions in water development. ~ Gilbert F. White

I can start by telling you you're stubborn and impulsive and prideful. And generous and protective and passionate. In public, you ride like the devil and fill out a pair of buckskin breeches like pure liquid sin, but in private, you behave as though you've joined a monastic order. You're kind to ugly dogs, and you're patient with awkward sisters. Your kisses are sweet. And your life is worth something." She fought back the emotion rising in her throat. "I'll tell you who you are, Rafe. Anytime you find yourself in doubt. And I won't even leave you bleeding. ~ Tessa Dare

In this era of fake news and paid news artificial intelligence is more and more used as a political tool to manipulate and dictate common people, through big data, biometric data, and AI analysis of online profiles and behaviors in social media and smart phones. But the days are not far when AI will also control the politicians and the media too. ~ Amit Ray

For, in the final analysis, our most common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. ~ John F. Kennedy

What gives us word-users the right to make life-and-death decisions concerning other living creatures that have no words? Why do we find ourselves in positions of such anguish (at least for some of us)? In the final analysis, it is simply because might makes right, and we humans, thanks to the intelligence afforded us by the complexity of our brains and our embeddedness in rich languages and cultures, are indeed high and mighty, relative to the "lower" animals (and vegetables). By virtue of our might, we are forced to establish some sort of ranking of creatures, whether we do so as a result of long and careful personal reflections or simply go along with the compelling flow of the masses. Are cows just as comfortably killable as mosquitoes? Would you feel any less troubled by swatting a fly preening on a wall than by beheading a chicken quivering on a block? ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

Heidegger wrote a book called Was Ist Das Ding - What Is a Thing? which was kind of interesting and influential to me, as a matter of fact. It's a small paperback, which I read. It's about the nature of thingness; what is it? It's a very penetrating analysis of that, and I think a rather influential book. I know other artists who have read it and come up with it. ~ Robert Barry

Zen culture invites us to experience reality without the intervening distractions of intellect, categories, analysis. ~ Tom Hoover

Peter Tertzakian's analysis of world oil is a fascinating reminder that history often foretells the major turning points of the future. ~ Gwyn Morgan

Over the past decades, students who have blindly followed their passion, without rational analysis of whether their choice of career truly was wise, have been more unhappy with their job choices than those who coupled passion with rationality. ~ Barbara Oakley

Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. ~ Clifford Geertz

Steris," he whispered, "I've been considering how to proceed once we decide how to infiltrate. I've thought about bringing you in with us, and I just don't see that it's feasible. I think it would be best if you stayed and watched the horses."
"Very well."
"No, really. Those are armed soldiers. I can't even fathom how I'd feel if I brought you in there and something happened. You need to stay out here."
"Very well."
"It isn't subject to - " Wax hesitated. "Wait. You're all right with this?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked. "I barely have any sense of where to point a gun, and have hardly any capacity for sneaking - that's really quite a scandalous talent if you think about it, Lord Waxillium. While I do believe that people tend to be safest when near you, riding into an enemy compound is stretching the issue. I'll stay here."
Wax grinned in the darkness. "Steris, you're a gem."
"What? Because I have a moderately healthy sense of self-preservation?"
"Let's just say that out in the Roughs, I was accustomed to people always wanting to try things beyond their capacity. And they always seemed determined to do it right when it was the most dangerous."
"Well, I shall endeavor to stay out of sight," Steris said, "and not get captured."
"I doubt you need to worry about that all the way out here."
"Oh, I agree," she said. "But that is the sort of statistical anomaly that plagues my life, so I'll plan for it nonetheless. ~ Brandon Sanderson

I've always made my decisions based on two factors: intellectual analysis and my gut. And when they meet, that's a go from me. That's when I see the goal. ~ Michael Ovitz

I dont think that unless a greater effort is made by the Government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Viet-Nam, against the Communists. ~ John F. Kennedy

There is a tremendous amount of support for the approach we have taken, which again is to base our decisions on risk analysis and thoughtful scientific process. ~ Mike Johanns

In Darwin's time no serious attempt had been made to examine the manifestations of variability. A vast assemblage of miscellaneous facts could formerly be adduced as seemingly comparable illustrations of the phenomenon "Variation." Time has shown this mass of evidence to be capable of analysis. When first promulgated it produced the impression that variability was a phenomenon generally distributed amongst living things in such a way that the specific divisions must be arbitrary. When this variability is sorted out, and is seen to be in part a result of hybridisation, in part a consequence of the persistence of hybrids by parthenogenetic reproduction, a polymorphism due to the continued presence of individuals representing various combinations of Mendelian allelomorphs, partly also the transient effect of alteration in external circumstances, we see how cautious we must be in drawing inferences as to the indefiniteness of specific limits from a bare knowledge that intermediates exist. ~ William Bateson