Quotes About Statistics

Los datos no mienten: una prostituta callejera de Chicago tiene más probabilidades de practicar el sexo con un policía que de ser detenida por uno.

Steven D. Levitt

As scientists like to say: The plural of anecdote is not data.)

Anyway, this is just the latest example of why I never trust statistics I get from people in the field of medicine, ever.

En las naciones industrializadas, la tasa actual de muerte materna durante el parto es de 9 mujeres por cada 100.000 partos. Hace solo cien años, la tasa era más de cincuenta veces más alta.

Married people, for instance, are demonstrably happier than single people; does this mean that marriage causes happiness? Not necessarily. The data suggest that happy people are more likely to get married in the first place. As one researcher memorably put it, "If you're grumpy, who the hell wants to marry you?

Según la Administración Nacional de Seguridad de Tráfico en Carreteras (NHTSA), más del 80 por ciento de los asientos para niños están mal instalados.

On a per capita basis, Switzerland has more firearms than just about any other country, and yet it is one of the safest places in the world. In other words, guns do not cause crime.

Steven D. Levitt

el Instituto de Medicina calculaba que cada año mueren entre 44.000 y 98.000 norteamericanos a causa de errores hospitalarios evitables —más muertos que por accidentes de automóvil o cáncer de mama—, y que uno de los principales errores es la infección de heridas. ¿La mejor medicina para evitar las infecciones? Hacer que los médicos se laven las manos con más frecuencia.

teachers and criminals and real-estate agents may lie, and politicians, and even C.I.A. analysts. But numbers don't.

35 million fewer females than males in the population.

Between 1995 and 2005, there were on average 60.3 worldwide shark attacks each year, with a high of 79 and a low of 46. There were on average 5.9 fatalities per year, with a high of 11 and a low of 3. In other words, the headlines during the summer of 2001 might just as easily have read "Shark Attacks About Average This Year." But that probably wouldn't have sold many magazines.

There is nothing like the sheer power of numbers to scrub away layers of confusion and contradiction.

For every extra year a young person was exposed to TV in his first 15 years, we see a 4 percent increase in the number of property-crime arrests later in life and a 2 percent increase in violent-crime arrests.

Gun murders are down? Well, you figure, that must be from all those tough new gun laws—until you examine the data and find that most people who commit crimes with guns are almost entirely unaffected by current gun laws.

At least 20 percent of American men born between 1933 and 1942 had their first sexual intercourse with a prostitute.

More than 70 percent of the men in his generation have sex before they marry, compared with just 33 percent in the earlier generation.

contar historias que se basan en datos acumulados y no en anécdotas personales, anomalías llamativas, opiniones personales, estallidos emocionales o tendencias morales.

El 28% de las mujeres de la página web declaraban ser rubias, un número bastante superior a la media, lo cual indica grandes dosis de tinte, de mentira, o de ambos.

Los cinturones de seguridad reducen el peligro de muerte hasta en un 70 por ciento;

Por cada punto que aumenta el porcentaje de coches de una ciudad que tienen instalado el LoJack, la tasa general de robos disminuye un 20 por ciento.

Elephants, meanwhile, kill at least 200 people every year. So why aren't we petrified of them?

The basic reality," Sandman told the New York Times, "is that the risks that scare people and the risks that kill people are very different.