Quotes & Sayings About Using Statistics

Price mostly meanders around recent price until a big shift in opinion occurs, causing price to jump up or down. This is crudely modeled by quants using something called a jump-diffusion process model. Again, what does this have to do with an asset's true intrinsic value? Not much. Fortunately, the value-focused investor doesn't have to worry about these statistical methods and jargon. Stochastic calculus, information theory, GARCH variants, statistics, or time-series analysis is interesting if you're into it, but for the value investor, it is mostly noise and not worth pursuing. The value investor needs to accept that often price can be wrong for long periods and occasionally offers interesting discounts to value. — Nick Gogerty

The world is producing more and more data, ever faster and faster. Yet, as the New York Times has noted, "Data is merely the raw material of knowledge."3* Statistics is the most powerful tool we have for using information to some meaningful end, — Charles Wheelan

This is not a dictatorship, this is based upon scientific evidence to support a given project. If you want to put up a building, say half a mile high, the material has to be available. Using statistics is not a dictatorship. It's a method of getting the most from existing resources. — Jacque Fresco

The value for which P=0.05, or 1 in 20, is 1.96 or nearly 2; it is convenient to take this point as a limit in judging whether a deviation ought to be considered significant or not. Deviations exceeding twice the standard deviation are thus formally regarded as significant. Using this criterion we should be led to follow up a false indication only once in 22 trials, even if the statistics were the only guide available. Small effects will still escape notice if the data are insufficiently numerous to bring them out, but no lowering of the standard of significance would meet this difficulty. — Ronald A. Fisher

The thing with high-tech is that you always end up using scissors. — David Hockney

The first requirement in using statistics is that the facts treated shall be reduced to comparable units. — Claude Bernard

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

Dawes observed that the complex statistical algorithm adds little or no value. One can do just as well by selecting a set of scores that have some validity for predicting the outcome and adjusting the values to make them comparable (by using standard scores or ranks). A formula that combines these predictors with equal weights is likely to be just as accurate in predicting new cases as the multiple-regression formula that was optimal in the original sample. More recent research went further: formulas that assign equal weights to all the predictors are often superior, because they are not affected by accidents of sampling. — Daniel Kahneman

a vast majority of employers now Google your name - yes, Google has become both noun and verb - before they'll consider hiring you. There's your new resume, using the word resume loosely. Bye, bye, control. Statistics are hard to come by, and they tend to be all over the map. Some are from very old surveys or very limited surveys (such as 100 employers). What we know for sure is that somewhere between 35% and 70% of employers now report that they have rejected applicants on the basis of what they found through Google. Things that can get you rejected: bad grammar or gross misspelling on your Facebook or LinkedIn profile; anything indicating you lied on your resume; any badmouthing of previous employers; any signs of racism, prejudice, or screwy opinions about stuff; anything indicating alcohol or drug abuse; and any - to put it delicately - inappropriate content, etc. — Richard N. Bolles

To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all. — Carlos Castaneda