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Themes "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." – Sherlock Holmes "A Scandal in Bohemia" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "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 Tukey "To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of." – R.A. Fisher, 1938 "If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong." – Richard Feynman "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." – Philip K. Dick Do, or do not. There is no "try." – Jedi Master Yoda Opportunity doesn't knock. It whispers. Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. – Howard Aiken "If you want to make enemies, try to change something." – Woodrow Wilson A job not worth doing is not worth doing well. "The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data." – John Tukey Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. – Mark Twain There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact – Sherlock Holmes (The Boscombe Valley Mystery) In earlier times, they had no statistics, and so they had to fall back on lies. – unknown For many people knowledge has the remarkable power of producing confidence instead of measureable aptitude. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Black Swan (2007) A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library. – unknown You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty. – Sacha Guitry The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny ..." –Isaac Asimov Often the choice is not between what you want and what you don't want. It's between what you don't want and what you REALLY don't want. There is none so blind as he who will not see. – unknown "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission." – Eleanor Roosevelt Words that soak into your ears are whispered ... not yelled. – unknown Prejudice is being down on something you're not up on. – unknown If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. – Herbert Stein "A man convinced against his will ... is of the same opinion still." – L.C. Annis (1864-1940) Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. – Arnold Toynbee "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak
out because I was not a socialist. An "activist" is a vain, self-involved person who engages in activities designed to call attention to himself, under the guise of helping someone else. Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. – Douglas Adams "Some ideas seem so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas seem so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operation of a free market is among the second kinds of ideas." – Thomas Sowell "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." – attributed to Winston Churchill A meta-theorem in numerical linear algebra is that if your algorithm involves finding the inverse of a matrix then you need a better algorithm. – Douglas Bates Direction is more important than speed. – anonymous "A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it [...] gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." – Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006) All models are wrong but some are useful. – George E. P. Box "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." – Wayne Gretzky A soft answer turneth away wrath ... – Proverbs 15:1 If a theory cannot produce a testable prediction, then it isn't science; it's philosophy. – unknown "... if a technology is commercially viable, then government support is not needed; and if a technology is not commercially viable, no amount of government support will make it so." – Thomas H. Lee, Ben C. Ball, Jr., and Richard D. Tabors, Energy Aftermath (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1990), pp. 167 I may not be the richest man on earth. Or the smartest. Or the handsomest. – Homer J. Simpson "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them" – Karl Popper, in "The Open Society and its Enemies" (1945) "Success is that happy feeling you get in the time between you do something and the time you tell a woman what you did." – Dilbert (Scott Adams) Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. – anonymous "You can't no more teach what you ain't learned than you can come from where you ain't been." – attributed to Mark Twain Re: Diversified investing. If you know nothing about poisonous snakes, keeping several species won't make you any safer. – Michael Kaplan, reviewing "Risk Intelligence" by David Apgar in the Dec 8, 2006 WSJ "If everybody's thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking." – George S. Patton Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." – Charlie Brown "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." – index card tacked to Einstein's office wall "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die." – Malachy McCourt "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from
here?" "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." – Ayn Rand "It is the Soldier, not the reporter who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the Soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the Soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag." – Father Denis Edward O'Brien, Sergeant, USMC (1923 – 2002) "These are not the droids you are looking for." – Obi-Wan Kenobi Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Of all things, good sense is the most fairly distributed: everyone thinks he is so well supplied with it that even those who are the hardest to satisfy in every other respect never desire more of it than they already have. – René Descartes (Discours de la Méthode. 1637) These data do not support the hypothesis. Well ... The first one does, but the second and third don't, now the fourth ... – unknown "He who would do good to another must do it in minute
particulars. "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." – attributed to many "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." attributed to Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965) Always do right. This will gratify some and astonish the rest. – Mark Twain (1835–1910) "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." – Edmund Burke The difference between men and women is that, if given the choice between saving the life of an infant or catching a fly ball, a woman will automatically choose to save the infant, without even considering if there's a man on base. – Dave Barry I find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too may others contemplating it with me at the same time. – Edward Abbey Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. – Niels Bohr A person who has a cat by the tail knows a whole lot more about cats than someone who has just read about them." – Mark Twain Don't be so humble – you are not that great. – Golda Meir (1898–1978) to a visiting diplomat The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things ... – Richard Feynman Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to Authority is not using his intelligence, he is just using his memory. – Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519 "p–values are dangerous, especially large, small, and in–between ones." – Frank E Harrell Jr., Prof. of Biostatistics and Department Chair, Vanderbilt University The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. – Thomas H. Huxley Rule of Scarcity – If it's not allocated by a market, then it's more expensive than money. – unknown Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. – Groucho Marx Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you
have carefully The quickest way to end a war is to lose it. – George Orwell First, do no harm. (Primum non nocere.) When you're talkin', you ain't learnin' nothin'. "The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work." – John von Neumann Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence. – Vince Lombardi "I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated." – Poul Anderson If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy. – Donald Knuth If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can only gain at the expense of another. – Milton Friedman A cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. – Oscar Wilde The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result. – Albert Einstein The laws of mathematics are not merely human inventions or creations. They simply are; they exist quite independently of the human intellect. The most that any(one) ... can do is to find that they are there and to take cognizance of them. – Maurits Escher The propositions of mathematics have, therefore, the same unquestionable certainty which is typical of such propositions as "All bachelors are unmarried," but they also share the complete lack of empirical content which is associated with that certainty: The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter. - Carl G. Hempel: Published in American Mathematical Monthly 52, 1945. Reprinted in Readings in Philosophical Analysis, ed. H. Feigl and W. Sellars (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949). Reprinted in The World of Mathematics, vol. III, ed. James R. Newman (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1956). "A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' " – Douglas Adams Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. – Sir Isaac Newton "It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance." – Murray Rothbard, (Making Economic Sense, 1995) Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance. "When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." – Abraham Maslow "I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us." – Umberto Eco (Foucault's Pendulum, VII) "Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat to advance."– Franklin Delano Roosevelt "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." – Abraham Lincoln "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." – Thomas Jefferson He heard on the news that obesity is now considered a disease. So he called in fat. (Shoe Thusday, November 11, 2004) "Cursive writing does not mean what I think it means." – Bart Simpson (writing on the blackboard after school) The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. – Albert Einstein
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