Sunday, February 24, 2008

Smile about Statistics

Statistics are for most students and researchers not very pleasible and even they hate it. For them we give on this page some food for thought (quotations) and smiling material (jokes and cartoons) on statistics. Enjoy yourself and know that statistics is not so bad as it seems.
Do you know of good quotes, jokes or cartoons on Statistics? Please don't hesitate, and send it to us. Thanks in advance.

Quotations

There are lies, darned lies, and statistical outliers.

Statistics means never having to say you're certain.

Statistics is the art of never having to say you're wrong. Variance is what any two statisticians are at. - C.J.Bradfield

A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.

A statistician is a person who stands in a bucket of ice water, sticks their head in an oven and says "on average, I feel fine!" - K.Dunnigan

A statistician drowned while crossing a stream that was, on average, 6 inches deep.

Most people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post, more for support than enlightenment.

Figures don't lie, but liars figure. - Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain)

Are statisticians normal?

An engineer, a physicist, and a statistician were moose hunting in northern Canada. After a short walk through the marshes they spotted a HUGE moose 150 metres away. The engineer raised his gun and fired at the moose. A puff of dust showed that the bullet landed 3 metres to the right of the moose. The physicist, realizing that there was a substantial breeze that the engineer did not account for, aimed to the left of the moose and fired. The bullet landed 3 metres to the left of the moose. The statistician jumped up and down and screamed "We got him! We got him!"

The weather man is never wrong. Suppose he says that there's an 80% chance of rain. If it rains, the 80% chance came up; if it doesn't, the 20% chance came up! - Saul Barron

All measurements are subject to variation.

The minute a statistician steps into the position of the executive who must make decisions and defend them, the statistician ceases to be a statistician. - W.E.Deming

I feel that the kind of examples of statistical analysis that tend to be considered in professional discussions ... are so grossly over-simplified as to make a pretentious mockery of real-life situations and statistical consultancy. - A.Ehrenberg

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics! - B.Disraeli

It has long recognized by public men of all kinds ... that statistics come under the head of lying, and that no lie is so false or inconclusive as that which is based on statistics. - H.Belloc

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment. - J.Baudrillard

Where is the knowledge that is lost in information? Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge? - T.S.Eliot

One picture is worth more than ten thousand words.

The only useful function of a statistician is to make predictions, and thus to provide a basis for action. - W.E.Deming

The most powerful mathematical tools are sometimes less important to the engineer than some of the simpler or less powerful tools. But often, for lack of information about either, neither is used. - C.M.Ryerson

A knowledge of statistics is like a knowledge of foreign languages or of algebra; it may prove of use at any time under any circumstances. - A.L.Bowley

The long-range contribution of statistics depends not so much upon getting a lot of highly trained statisticians into industry as it does in creating a statistically minded generation of physicists, chemists, engineers, and others who will in any way have a hand in developing and directing the production processes of tomorrow. - W.A.Shewhart & W.E.Deming

The fundamental difference between engineering with and without statistics boils down to the difference between the use of a scientific method based upon the concept of laws of nature that do not allow for chance or uncertainty and a scientific method based upon the concept of laws of probability as an attribute of nature. - W.A.Shewhart

When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of the meager and unsatisfactory kind. - Lord Kelvin (British physicist)

1. If quality and productivity are to improve from current levels, changes must be made in the way things are presently being done.

2. We should like to have good data to serve as a rational basis on which to make these changes.

3. The twin question must then be addressed: what data should be collected, and, once collected, how should they be analyzed?

4. Statistics is the science that addresses this twin question. - W.G.Hunter

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