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Statistics Quotes & Jokes
Statistics Quotes & Jokes
A
A statistician is … - someone who insists on being certain about uncertainty – Unknown - someone who can draw a mathematically exact line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion – Unknown - a person whose lifetime ambition is to be wrong 5 per cent of the time – Unknown - someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about and make you feel it’s your fault – Unknown *
A woman hears from her doctor that she has only half a year to live. The doctor advises her to marry a statistician and to live in South Dakota. The woman asks, “Will this cure my illness?” Answer of the doctor, “No, but the half year will seem pretty long” – Unknown *
A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine – Unknown *
A statistician and the statistician’s wife were marooned on a remote island. When the wife asked how they were going to escape the island and get home, the statistician replied … “Assuming we had a boat…” *
D
Did you know that the great majority of people have more than the average number of legs? It’s obvious really; amongst the 57 million people in Britain there are probably 5,000 people who have got only one leg. Therefore the average number of legs is: ((5000 * 1) + (56,995,000 * 2)) / 57,000,000 = 1.9999123. Since most people have two legs ... – Unknown *
H
Historically, Statistics is no more then State Arithmetic, a system of computation by which differences between individuals are eliminated by the taking of an average. It has been used - indeed, still is used - to enable rulers to know just how far they may safely go in picking the pockets of their subjects – M.J. Moroney *
L
Legal proceedings are like statistics. If you manipulate them, you can prove anything – Arthur Hailey *
Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment – J. Baudrillard *
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math – Unknown
N
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted – Albert Einstein
O
O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers – Hamlet, Shakespeare Old statisticians never die, they just become nonsignificant – Unknown *
S
Statistics are … * - fiction in its most uninteresting form – Evan Esar - the science that can prove everything except the usefulness of statistics – Evan Esar - the art of lying by means of figures – William Stekel - like a bikini - what they reveal is suggestive but what they conceal is vital – Aaron Levenstein - the straw out of which I, like every other economist, have to make the bricks – A. Marshall - yet another mistress to deceive us – Spanish proverb
Statistics may be defined as ‘a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty’ – W.A. Wallis
T
Ten per cent of all car thieves are left-handed. All Polar bears are left-handed. If your car is stolen, there’s a ten per cent chance it was nicked by a Polar bear – Unknown *
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics – Benjamin Disraeli
There are two kinds of statistics: the kind you look up and the kind you make up – Rex Stout
Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything – Gregg Easterbrook
Top ten reasons to become a statistician … * - deviation is considered normal - we feel complete and sufficient - we are “mean” lovers - statisticians do it discretely and continuously - we are right 95 per cent of the time - we can legally comment on someone's posterior distribution - we may not be normal but we are transformable - we never have to say we are certain - we are honestly significantly different - no one wants our jobs
________ * Source: StatisTics, Ed. A.Hermann, Statistics Denmark, 2005
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