Quotes About Averages

Rules were about averages, not specifics, and since people were conditioned since childhood to accept rules, it was easy to follow them blindly. To trust in the system. It was easier not to worry about random possibilities. It meant that people didn't have to think about potential consequences, and when the sun was shining on Friday afternoons, they could play Frisbee without a care in the world.

you just can't use averages to predict the specifics of the next generation of eddies, any more than you could use an average to predict the life-story of an individual human being.

I live by the law of averages," said Alois. "I prefer to think of the ongoing possibility of profit rather than of the intermittent perils that surround all activity.

sometimes it pays to model the outliers, not flatten them into averages. This isn't limited to business.

To break the worry habit before it breaks you—here is Rule 3: "Let's examine the record." Let's ask ourselves: "What are the chances, according to the law of averages, that this event I am worrying about will ever occur?

Be careful of averages and how they're applied. One way that they can fool you is if the average combines samples from disparate populations. This can lead to absurd observations such as: On average, humans have one testicle.

Especially with sports cars, when you have got so many cars on the track with various degrees of competitiveness, then something will happen. It's the nature of racing, the law of averages. If you want to be a front-runner then you are going to have to push very hard, and collisions can happen.

I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live.

Psycho? The woman's senile. We had to stop at about thirty gas stations on the way over here. Finally I got tired of getting out of the car and showing her which was the Men's and which was the Women's, so I let her pick them herself. I worked out a system. The law of averages. I laid money on her and she came out about fifty-fifty.

We must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wade across a river with an average depth of four feet.

In cricket, as in no other game, a great master may well go back to the pavilion scoreless.... In no other game does the law of averages get to work so potently, so mysteriously.