The Lair of the Bear

Statistical Quotes

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Introduction

This page contains a collection of quotations, quip and some jokes on statistics. The page is subdivided into citations (including the origin), remarks or comments to think over, and a more funny part of jokes. My intention is to get some "food for thought".
Enjoy yourself!!!

Citations on Statistics and by Statisticians

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

Remarks and Comments

There are two kinds of statistics: the kind you look up and the kind you make up. - Rex Stout
All measurements are subject to variation.
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
All models are wrong; some models are useful. - George Box
I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic. - Winston Churchill
There are no facts, only interpretations. - Frederick Nietzsche
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. - Joseph Stalin
Statistics in the hands of an engineer are like a lamppost to a drunk. They're used more for support than illumination. - A. E. Housman
It is easy to lie with statistics, but it is easier to lie without them. - Frederick Mosteller
First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure. - Mark Twain
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. - Oscar Wilde

Jokes and Fun

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