Statistical Life Quotes & Sayings

Practically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they're taught in academia, and (2) doesn't mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I've tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that. — Charlie Munger

Back then I used to say that I despised the new coinage "quality time," that it was yuppie parents' smiley-face equivalent to lawyers' "billable hours. — Kurt Andersen

Presentation literacy isn't an optional extra for the few. It's a core skill for the twenty-first century. — Chris J. Anderson

I would think it odd, he said, that he had never married. I did not, in fact, think it at all odd
the statistical chances against any woman being prepared to endure both the hairiness of his legs and the tedium of his conversation seemed to be negligible. I did not express this view, but said sympathetically that the military life must be difficult to combine with the domestic. — Sarah Caudwell

Another statistical survey, of 7,948 students at forty-eight colleges, was conducted by social scientists from Johns Hopkins University. Their preliminary report is part of a two-year study sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. Asked what they considered "very important" to them now, 16 percent of the students checked "making a lot of money"; 78 percent said their first goal was "finding a purpose and meaning to my life. — Viktor E. Frankl

Miracles are statistical improbabilities. And fate is an illusion humanity uses to comfort itself in the dark. There are no absolutes in life, save death. — Amie Kaufman

If you understand that you are not just your appearance or your physical body, you will be better equipped to handle negative feelings or imperfection regarding your outward appearance — Sunday Adelaja

Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906 by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. — David Goodstein

Her statistics were more than a study ... For her, Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique Sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed - and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief - that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator - to say nothing of the politician - too often failed for want of this knowledge. — Karl Pearson

In order to understand the symbolic indications of the unconscious, one must be careful not to get outside oneself or "beside oneself," but to stay emotionally within oneself. Indeed, it is vitally important that the ego should continue to function in normal ways. Only if I remain an ordinary human being, conscious of my incompleteness, can I become receptive to the significant contents and processes of the unconscious. But how can a human being stand the tension of feeling himself at one with the whole universe, while at the same time he is only a miserable earthly human creature? If, on the one hand, I despise myself as merely a statistical cipher, my life has no meaning and is not worth living. But if, on the other hand, I feel myself to be part of something much greater, how am I to keep my feet on the ground? It is very difficult indeed to keep these inner opposites united within oneself without toppling over into one or the other extreme. — C. G. Jung

Look at this limp cravet. And the sad state of those cuffs. I can hardly bring myself to look upon them. — Emmuska Orczy

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

Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation as in physical science it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statutes not only the national will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics. — James A. Garfield

Most analysts are SO SMART and have amazing ideas, but they can't convey their genius ideas to others. — Chip Heath

When we look at what has the strongest statistical relationship to overall evaluation of your life, the first one is your career well-being, or the mission, purpose and meaning of what you're doing when you wake up each day. — Tom Rath

All the physical and chemical laws that are known to play an important part in the life of organisms are of this statistical kind; any other kind of lawfulness and orderliness that one might think of is being perpetually disturbed and made inoperative by the unceasing heat motion of the atoms. — Erwin Schrodinger

One of the greatest challenges of becoming myself has been acknowledging that I'm not who I thought I was supposed to be or who I always pictured myself being. — Brene Brown

Learning texts is worth doing not because it's easy but because it's hard. — Joshua Foer

Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man's human existence. — Ludwig Von Mises

In the face of such overwhelming statistical possibilities hypochondria has always seems to me to be the only rational position to take on life. — John Diamond

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth. — Jean De La Bruyere

Statistical high Vegas odds probability is that nothing of any significance will ever happen to you in your entire boring life. — Doug Stanhope

Down deep in every soul has a hidden longing, impulse, and
ambition to do something fine and enduring ... If you are willing,
great things are possible to you. — Grenville Kleiser

We Navajos believe in witchcraft. Cut hair and fingernail clippings should be gathered and hidden or burned. Such things could be used to invoke bad medicine against their owner. People should not leave parts of themselves scattered around to be picked up by someone else. Even the smallest children knew that. — Chester Nez

Life expectancy is a statistical phenomenon. You could still be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow. — Ray Kurzweil

...that realisation that I was the oddity, the statistical probability, life was predictable. — Ruth Dugdall

Although I speak very highly of Marines, whether they are enlisted or officers, there always seems to be a statistical anomaly when it comes to the ratio of shitbags to non-shitbags everywhere in the world. — Jeffrey Sands

Do not fear giving the truth, just be sure to give it with love. — J. Lynn Else

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale. — Richard Dawkins

In high school algebra, someone had already worked out the formulas. The teacher knew them or could find them in the teacher's manual for the textbook. Imagine a word problem where nobody knows how to turn it into a formula, where some of the information is redundant and should not be used, where crucial information is often missing, and where there is no similar example worked out earlier in the textbook. This is what happens when one tries to apply statistical models to real-life problems. — David Salsburg

Robots have a rich and storied history in movies. — John Podhoretz

Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million. — Joseph Stiglitz

Suddenly, I began to wonder: If one in three or four American women had an abortion at some time in her life
a common statistical estimate, even in those days of illegality
then why, WHY should this single surgical procedure be deemed a criminal act? — Gloria Steinem

The Numerati too, are grappling with towering complexity. They're looking for patterns in data that describe something almost hopelessly complex: human life and behavior. The audacity of their mission is almost maddening. They're going to figure out who we're likely to vote for, who we want to work with, perhaps even who we're best suited to love, all from the statistical patterns of data? It's the height of presumption, and it leads to humbling disappointments. Like the trees growing in the forests of Minnesota, we confound those who try to categorize us, and we do it most of the time without even trying. Life is complex. — Stephen Baker

I focus on the most important form of innumeracy in everyday life, statistical innumeracy
that is, the inability to reason about uncertainties and risk. — Gerd Gigerenzer