# Some inspiring quotes

Taken from Georges Monette’s website (http://www.math.yorku.ca/~georges/):

“Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.” – John W. Tukey, (1962), ”The future of data analysis.” Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33, 1-67.

“A bad answer to a good question may be far better than a good answer to a bad question.” – a graduate class extrapolating from Tukey's dictum.

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” – James Thurber

“All models are wrong but some are useful.” – George E. P. Box; Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces, 1987
“All models are wrong but, we hope, not as wrong as the ones we used earlier.” –paraphrased from Isaac Asimov

“It is much more important to be clear than to be correct.” – Blair Wheaton
“It is better to be wrong than to be vague.” – Freeman Dyson

“Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.” – Karl Popper

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain with attribution to Benjamin Disraeli

“It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without it.” – Andrejs Dunkels

“If you try to estimate everything, you will end up estimating nothing.” – [I forget who said this but I'd like to know!]

“Causal interpretation of the results of regression analysis of observational data is a risky business. The responsibility rests entirely on the shoulders of the researcher, because the shoulders of the statistical technique cannot carry such strong inferences.” – Jan de Leeuw.

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.” – Bertrand Russell

“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” – Carl Sagan and many many others

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.” – André Gide

“If you amplify everything, you hear nothing.” – Jon Stewart
“Seek the company of those who seek the truth, and run away from those who have found it.” – Vaclav Havel
“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the right questions.” – Claude Lévi-Strauss ( Le Cru et le Cuit, 1964 ) (*)

“Correlation does not imply causation but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there.' – Randall Munroe, xkcd.com.

'If you torture the data long enough it will confess' - Ronald Coase

Lisa Simpson on Happiness vs Intelligence

W. Edwards Deming: “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion” – “In God we trust, all others must bring data”