71 Data Quotes

The reports on human progress are beginning to come in, and some are a little discouraging.

The level of ignorance is declining, and the ability to accumulate data and manipulate it for various ends is increasing.

You don't get to cut that chain of evidence and start over. You're always going to be pursued by your data shadow, which is forming from thousands and thousands of little leaks and tributaries of information.

Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.

I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.

More proof that trusting the Feds to protect our information is like hiring Homer Simpson to guard the donuts.

There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.

To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.

In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, 'How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?' I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, 'Four.' He said, 'I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.' With that, the conversation was over.

[T]he same past data can confirm a theory and its exact opposite! If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.

All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again-finally turning into an expectation-then theories are overturned.

'Have the climate models been successful in predicting anything? They, of course, predict substantial global warming. This is not surprising given the expressed belief of some of the model builders in the global warming hypothesis and the many parameters in the model that need to be introduced. However, the models also predict unambiguously that the atmosphere is warming faster than the surface of the earth; but all the available observational data unambiguously shows the opposite! Truth in science is always determined from observational facts. One finds the truth by making a hypothesis and comparing observations with the hypothesis. It is absolutely essential that one should be neutral and not fall in love with the hypothesis. If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing. 'Truth by Assertion' is not science.' [1]

Any inaccuracies in this index may be explained by the fact that it has been sorted with the help of a computer.

Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion... Florence Nightingale believed - and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief - that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator - to say nothing of the politician - too often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she went further; she held that the universe - including human communities - was evolving in accordance with a divine plan; that it was man's business to endeavor to understand this plan and guide his actions in sympathy with it. But to understand God's thoughts, she held we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose. Thus the study of statistics was for her a religious duty.

Reports to the Surgeon General... represent the final word upon the efficient and devoted sense of responsibility of our people in this obligation to our fellow citizens. Overwhelmingly they confirm the fact that the general mortality rate, infant mortality rate, epidemics, the disease rate-are less than in normal times. There is but one explanation. That is, that through an aroused sense of public responsibility, those in destitution and their children are receiving actually more adequate care than even in normal times.

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

Sir, pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass, is my point. But I wouldn't drink it. The last third is usually backwash.

A rare book-at once of great importance and wonderful to read.: Gould presents a fascinating historical study of scientific racism, tracing it through monogeny and polygeny, phrenology, recapitulation, and hereditarian IQ theory. He stops at each point to illustrate both the logical inconsistencies of the theories and the prejudicially motivated, albeit unintentional, misuse of data in each case.: A major addition to the scientific literature.

'We all have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost -- for support, but not for illumination.'

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

Aristotelian , Euclidian [line, space, length] and Newtonian [speed of light] systems... have a few unjustified infinities too many: when such an infinity is introduced into the denominator, it makes the whole expression vanish. In other words, faulty, insufficient observations leads to the introduction of ... fanciful 'infinities'.

Years ago, if your husband died in a house fire, you could get a covered wagon and go to Oregon. Now, as soon as you arrive in Oregon, someone could google you. 'Oh, well, widow Simpson. Really sorry to hear about the house fire.'

A three standard deviation is a statistical fluctuation; a five standard deviation effect is a miracle. Quoted by Owen Chamberlain.

The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't.

It is as though a star throws the whole secret history of its being into its spectrum, and we have only to learn how to read it aright in order to solve the most abstruse problems of the physical Universe.

The [economic] numbers are very benign. The economy in fact seems to be slowing a little bit. I know it's hard to read this week-to-week, month-to-month. But it does appear that it's slowing.

Although meaningless in a tribal context, numbers and statistics assume mythic and magical qualities of infallibility in literate societies. (p.114)

As we transfer our whole being to the data bank, privacy will become a ghost or echo of its former self and what remains of community will disappear. (1980)

I know the basic facts cause they've been repeated again and again across various duty desk counters at police stations over the past months and years: I'm 6ft 2in, green-brown eyes. Distinguishing features: moles. Tattoos: loads. Got a wolf, a mermaid, a heart with a K in it. They don't go through your personality traits.

Thus, we have three principles for increasing adequacy of data: if you must work with a single object, look for imperfections that record historical descent; if several objects are available, try to render them as stages of a single historical process; if processes can be directly observed, sum up their effects through time. One may discuss these principles directly or recognize the 'little problems' that Darwin used to exemplify them: orchids, coral reefs, and worms-the middle book, the first, and the last.

Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.

With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible. Once a company that produces a certain product goes out of business, it has no simple way to uncover how its product encoded data. The code is thus lost, and the software is inaccessible. Knowledge has been destroyed.

True personalization is now upon us. It's not just a matter of selecting relish over mustard once. The post-information age is about acquaintance over time: machines' understanding individuals with the same degree of subtlety (or more than) we can expect from other human beings, including idiosyncrasies (like always wearing a blue-striped shirt) and totally random events, good and bad, in the unfolding narrative of our lives.

Archie Goodwin, before stating one of the second kind, chapter 9: There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another - but which one? Differences are crucial.

We really haven't got any great amount of data on the subject, and without data how can we reach any definite conclusions? All we have - everything - favors the idea of what religionists call the 'Hereafter.' Science, if it ever learns the facts, probably will find another more definitely descriptive term.

In this day and age if you've got the technology then it's vital to use that technology to track people down. The number on the database should be the maximum number you can get.