Statistics

Statistics is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data.

• There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
  • Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli by Mark Twain in "Chapters from My Autobiography — XX", North American Review No. DCXVIII (JULY 5, 1907) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19987. His attribution is unverified and the origin is uncertain: see Lies, damned lies, and statistics and Leonard H. Courtney.

• The rise of biometry in this 20th century, like that of geometry in the 3rd century before Christ, seems to mark out one of the great ages or critical periods in the advance of the human understanding.

• A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler's "big lie"; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you.
  • Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics (1954), introduction

• The epistemological value of probability theory is based on the fact that chance phenomena, considered collectively and on a grand scale, create non-random regularity.
  • Andrey Kolmogorov, Limit Distributions for Sums of Independent Random Variables, tr. K. L. Chung, Addison Wesley, 1954

• Politicians use statistics like drunkards use lampposts: not for illumination, but for support.
  • Attributed to Hans Kuhn.

• Average a left-hander with a right-hander and what do you get?
  • Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things (1988), Ch. 6, p. 162

• To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose.
  • Florence Nightingale, quoted in Karl Pearson, Life of Francis Galton, vol.II, ch.xiii, sect.i

• The true foundation of theology is to ascertain the character of God. It is by the art of statistics that law in the social sphere can be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of the character of God thereby revealed. The study of statistics is thus a religious service.
  • Attributed to Florence Nightingale by F.N. David in Games, Gods, and Gambling: A History of Probability and Statistical Ideas, 1962, page 103.

• Thomasina: If there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers?
  Septimus: We do.
  Thomasina: Then why do your shapes describe only the shapes of manufacture?
  Septimus: I do not know.
  Thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.
  • Tom Stoppard, Arcadia (1993)

• There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
  • Archie Goodwin, in Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novel Death of a Doxy (1966)

• Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read or write.
  • Attributed to H. G. Wells by Darrell Huff in How to Lie with Statistics (1954), epigraph