Quotes & Sayings About Variability

It is as if the mission of modernity was to squeeze every drop of variability and randomness out of life - with the ironic result of making the world a lot more unpredictable, as if the goddesses of chance wanted to have the last word. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

More than any other single trait, it is the apple's genetic variability - its ineluctable wildness - that accounts for its ability to make itself at home in places as different from one another as New England and New Zealand, Kazakhstan and California. Wherever the apple tree goes, its offspring propose so many different variations on what it means to be an apple - at least five per apple, several thousand per tree - that a couple of these novelties are almost bound to have whatever qualities it takes to prosper in the tree's adopted home. — Michael Pollan

Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice. — Frank Herbert

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

You want to favor systems that benefit from error, disorder, variability and things like that. You want to favor these systems and unfortunately, when - there's something I call the Soviet Illusion. The more the government becomes intrusive, the more things have to follow a script, and it can't handle this kind of system. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Perhaps nothing speaks more eloquently of the variability of spelling in the age than the fact that a dictionary published in 1604, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, spelled "words" two ways on the title page. — Bill Bryson

In the financial world, risk translates to uncertainty. It's measured by "standard deviation from the norm" -- in other words, it's measured by how much the returns swing up and down. Says King, "Most individuals measure risk as their chance of loss, but we measure risk by the variability of returns. — Kathy Kristof

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

forming the "hydrogen bond"... is dynamic, with the exchange occurring in a few billionths of a billionth of a second. Since water molecules can "lose" two hydrogen atoms and "win" two by way of their oxygen atom, they are on average regrouped in fours, and the network of water, whether in our glass or in our cells is tetrahedral. All the same, this arrangement is not perfect in liquid water (otherwise the water would be a solid crystal), and locally there are many defects in the network. Although the motif of four water molecules is the most common in "linear" hydrogen bonds, the water molecule sometimes has a "forked tongue" with bifurcated liaisons, which creates arrangements of three or five, or even two or six molecules. This variability prevents water from being structured over a great distance and enables it to remain in a liquid state at the ambient temperature. — Denis Le Bihan

Causes of Variability - Effects of Habit and the use and disuse of Parts - Correlated Variation - Inheritance - Character of Domestic Varieties - Difficulty of distinguishing between Varieties and Species - Origin of Domestic Varieties from one or more Species - Domestic Pigeons, their Differences and Origin - Principles of Selection, anciently followed, their Effects - Methodical and Unconscious Selection - Unknown Origin of our Domestic Productions - Circumstances favourable to Man's power of Selection. — Charles Darwin

When I wrote a long story about the retreat of sea ice, I made clear it could go the other way for a while, and that doesn't mean we don't know that a warmer world will have less sea ice. It just means there's a lot of variability and people can pay too much attention to the big swings in one direction or the other. — Andrew Revkin

In particular, Australia, because of its ancient geography, soil profile and distinctive weather patterns, is more adversely affected by climate variability than some other continents. — Peter Garrett

The only way to reduce the variability in the estimate is to reduce the variability in the project. — Steve McConnell

Just as they were formulated to express Jewish or Greek reasons for faith in Jesus, it is possible on principle to formulate new titles to express, say, Hindu reasons or even Marxist reasons for faith in Jesus. This historical openness and variability of the titles for Jesus, to which the history of Christian tradition bears witness, has, however, a point of reference and a criterion. This is provided by his personal name, Jesus, and the history which concluded with his crucifixion and resurrection. — Jurgen Moltmann

He could see the tall, peeling yellow building at the periphery of his range of vision. But something about it struck him as strange. A shimmer, an unsteadiness, as if the building faded forward into stability and then retreated into insubstantial uncertainty. An oscillation, each phase lasting a few seconds and then blurring off into its opposite, a fairly regular variability as if an organic pulsation underlay the structure. As if, he thought, it's alive. — Philip K. Dick

The great variability of all the external differences between the races of man, likewise indicates that they cannot be of much importance; for if important, they would long ago have been either fixed and preserved, or eliminated. — Charles Darwin

The great fact of individual difference and variability (that is, inequality) is evident from the long record of human experience: hence, the general recognition of the antihuman nature of a world of coerced uniformity. — Murray Rothbard

In the scale of life there is a gradual decline in physical variability, as the organism has gathered into itself resources for meeting the exigencies of changing external conditions; and that while in the mindless and motionless plant these resources are at a minimum, their maximum is reached in the mind of man, which, at length, rises to a level with the total order and powers of nature, and in its scientific comprehension of nature is a summary, an epitome of the world. — Chauncey Wright

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

The modern joint stock firm is the outcome of innumerable decisions made by individual entrepreneurs, owners and managers. For these decision makers the choices among alternatives were limited and the outcomes uncertain, but almost always there were choices. Despite the variability of these individual decisions, taken cumulatively they produced clear patterns of institutional change — Alfred D. Chandler Jr.

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

Perception can be one-sided or variant: "Glass half empty or half full." There usually is more than one way of perceiving. Thoroughly check your inner dialogue. — T.F. Hodge

Scrum embraces the fact that in product development, some level of variability is required in order to build something new. — Kenneth S. Rubin

For example, a set of twenty-five studies involving five hundred astrologers examined the average degree of agreement between astrological predictions. In social science, such as in psychology, tests that have less than o.8 (i.e., 8o percent) agreement level are considered unreliable. Astrology's reliability is an embarrassingly low o. I, with a variability around the mean of o.o6 standard deviations. This means that there is, on average, no agreement at all among the predictions made by different astrologers. — Massimo Pigliucci

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

The five-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

Common sense says that the amazing complexity of life cannot arise out of a random process. The neo-Darwinians use clever arguments to show why evolution should work and why common sense is wrong. One after the other of them has explained that although the variability occurs randomly, the selection process gives it direction and makes it nonrandom ... if the arguments were solid and correct they should have put the theory on a stable and reliable foundation. The neo-Darwinians would like everyone to believe they have done that. — Lee Spetner

The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness. — Thomas Henry Huxley

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

Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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. — G.K. Chesterton

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

Variability is the world's most fundamental quality. For — Vadim Zeland

A complex system benefits from not following the same practices over and over again. By enduring a little bit of stress and continuously adapting to variability in the environment, the system learns to become fitter and healthier. — Jurgen Appelo

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

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

Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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

without variability, we cannot innovate. Product development produces the recipes for products, not the products themselves. If a design does not change, there can be no value-added. But, when we change a design, we introduce uncertainty and variability in outcomes. We cannot eliminate all variability without eliminating all value-added. — Donald G. Reinertsen

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

Children who don't feel safe in infancy have trouble regulating their moods and emotional responses as they grow older. By kindergarten, many disorganized infants are either aggressive or spaced out and disengaged, and they go on to develop a range of psychiatric problems.23 They also show more physiological stress, as expressed in heart rate, heart rate variability,24 stress hormone responses, and lowered immune factors.25 Does this kind of biological dysregulation automatically reset to normal as a child matures or is moved to a safe environment? So far as we know, it does not. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

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

By playing happy or sad music, displaying different emotionally moving photographs, or giving different kinds of feedback to participants during a taxing task, researchers can manipulate participants' affective responses. This proves the variability of affective states in response to constantly changing surroundings and social interactions. Of course classrooms are rife with changing conditions that influence students' affective states. — Anne Meyer

Albert Bandura, a Stanford psychologist who has done much of the research on self-efficacy, sums it up well: "People's beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failures; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong."24 — Daniel Goleman

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

According to any textbook on dynamic meteorology, one may reasonably conclude that in a warmer world, extratropical storminess and weather variability will actually decrease. — Richard Lindzen

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

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

The noble things and the just things, which the political art examines, admit of much dispute and variability, such that they are held to exist by law11 alone and not by nature. — Aristotle.

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

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

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

Mindfulness involves two key strategies for improving health: attention to context and attention to variability. — Ellen J. Langer

Verbal arguments should always be suspect. — Lee Spetner

Like resilience, self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability. Productivity and stability are the usual excuses for turning creative human beings into mechanical adjuncts to production processes. Or for narrowing the genetic variability of crop plants. Or for establishing bureaucracies and theories of knowledge that treat people as if they were only numbers. Self-organization — Donella H. Meadows

The retreat of the Arctic sea ice, the warming of the oceans, the rapid shrinking of the glaciers, the redistribution of species, the thawing of the permafrost - these are all new phenomena. It is only in the last five or ten years that global warming has finally emerged from the background "noise" of climate variability. And even so, the changes that can be seen lag behind the changes that have been set in motion. The warming that has been observed so far is probably only about half the amount required to bring the planet back into energy balance. This means that even if carbon dioxide were to remain stable at today's levels, temperatures would still continue to rise, glaciers to melt, and weather patterns to change for decades to come. — Elizabeth Kolbert

Self-organization is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability. Productivity and stability are the usual excuses for turning creative human beings into mechanical adjuncts to production processes. Or for narrowing the genetic variability of crop plants. Or for establishing bureaucracies and theories of knowledge that treat people as if they were only numbers. — Donella H. Meadows

The cyclicality of hard alternating with easy plays out not only in the day and the week but also across training cycles and even across years. Think of Olympians who take an easy year or two in their quadrennial cycles. Check that there is variety across your training at every level, from the cooldown after a hard workout to the easier year after a particularly tough season. Active recovery, both in easy workouts and in easy days, introduces variability to training. Remember Carl Foster's finding, outlined in Chapter 4, that athletes can adapt better to a greater overall training stress when it is variable instead of monotonous. Make the easy days really easy so that the hard days can be truly hard. If you can rein in your effort on your easy days, you'll have room to push a little faster or a little longer on your hard days, yielding a much bigger fitness reward than simply muddling through with easy days that are too hard and hard days that therefore become too slow or short. — Rountree Sage

The IPCC explicitly addressed - and rejected - the Marshall Institute argument for blaming the Sun. The upper limits on solar variability, they explained, are "small compared with greenhouse forcing and even if such a change occurred over the next few decades, it would be swamped by the enhanced greenhouse effect."75 — Naomi Oreskes