Statistics Quotes

Statistically speaking, there is a 65 percent chance that the love of your life is having an affair. Be very suspicious.

Scott Dikkers

There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Benjamin Disraeli

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

If your experiment needs a statistician, you need a better experiment.

Ernest Rutherford

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.

Evan Esar

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.

Henry Clay

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

George E. P. Box

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

Aaron Levenstein

I will stand on, and continue to use, the figures I have used, because I believe they are correct. Now, I'm not going to deny that you don't now and then slip up on something; no one bats a thousand.

Ronald Reagan

He used statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts; for support rather than illumination.

Andrew Lang

Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lamp posts... for support rather than illumination.

Source Unknown

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Mark Twain

To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of.

Ronald Fisher

Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.

George E. P. Box

Statistically, the probability of any of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in contented dazzlement of surprise.

Lewis Thomas

I could prove God statistically.

George Gallup

No matter what the statistics say, there's always a way.

Bernard Siegel

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.

Jean Baudrillard

An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem.

John Tukey

In God we trust. All others must bring data.

W. Edwards Deming