Quotes About Statistics

His favoured objects of contemplation were economic facts, usually in statistical form. He used to say that his best ideas came to him from 'messing about with figures and seeing what they must mean'. Yet he was famously sceptical about econometrics – the use of statistical methods for forecasting purposes. He championed the cause of better statistics, not to provide material for the regression coefficient, but for the intuition of the economist to play on.

It was the income-determination model, based on the multiplier, together with the consequent development of national income statistics, which made Keynesian economics acceptable to policy-makers, since it offered them a seemingly secure method of forecasting and controlling the movement of such 'real' variables as investment, consumption, and employment.

By the end of 2007, UK household debt had reached 177% of disposable income, mortgage debt 132%. Martin Wolf wrote in the Financial Times in September 2008

Diagnostic errors contribute to 40,000 to 80,000 deaths per year in the United States. And reviews of malpractice cases have demonstrated that diagnostic errors are the most common

Thus, in 1955, 1 in every 468 Americans was hospitalized due to a mental illness. In 1987, there were 1.25 million people receiving an SSI or SSDI payment because they were disabled by mental illness, or 1 in every 184 Americans.

The GAO, in its June 2008 report, concluded that one in every sixteen young adults in the United States is now "seriously mentally ill.

Statistically speaking, there isn't a single German born in 1920 who hasn't changed addresses at least once in his life," said Pelletier.

French losses, from August 1914 to 31 December 1915, came to 1,932,051 of whom no less than 1,001,271 were killed or missing. The British total in the same period was 512,420, of whom around 200,000 were killed or missing.

My primary concern is the area's crime stats. Half a dozen stabbings a week, not to mention the monthly shootings and annual homicide rate. Gang activity mostly, but predators are predators and as a middle-aged woman I'm not particularly intimidating.

one may scarcely find one man among seven women, so many women are there widowed whilst their husbands are alive'.

One out of twenty-three is a sociopath and that's 4 percent of the population, that's a lot of sociopaths. Anorexic's are 3 percent and everybody talks about them.

statistical fiction

the indeterminacy of individual behavior can be regularized by considering people statistically at the level of the mass.

I love statistics because they place what happens to a scrap of humanity, like me, on a worldwide scale.

1 in 5 people have dandruff. 1 in 4 people have mental health problems. I've had both.

He had a reasonable job as an actuary (whatever that was)

It has been estimated that 50 percent of all human conceptions end in spontaneous abortion, usually without a woman even realizing that she was pregnant. In fact, 20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. There is an obvious truth here that cries out for acknowledgment: if God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all.

In terms of merit, sports has mathematical statistics. That's how you know who the best player is.

I hope somebody hits .400 soon. Then people can start pestering that guy with questions about the last guy to hit .400.

I think all of us certainly believed the statistics which said that probably 88% chance of mission success and maybe 96% chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds.

odds don't matter. The natural world defies statistics.

I believe in tragedy," Shelby responds coldly. "Not miracles." "Yeah, right. Faith is for idiots." Ben seems relieved. "Statistics speak the truth." "You have to stop thinking. It's going to drive us

Every criminal was humiliated, neglected, or abused in childhood, but few of them can admit to it. Many genuinely do not know that they were. Thus denial gets in the way of statistical surveys based on the question-and-answer method, none of which will have any practical prophylactic effect as long as our eyes and ears remain closed to the issues posed by childhood.

I suspect that human beings were generally catastrophists at heart until their instinctive awareness of the earth's unpredictability was gradually supplanted by a belief in uniformitarianism—a regime of ideas that was supported by scientific theories like Lyell's, and also by a range of governmental practices that were informed by statistics and probability.