Quotes About Prediction

we are in the position of a person who knows the ending of a book and who for amusement, is reading the early chapters. We enjoy them once again; but we are hardly thrilled and excited by them anymore, we know what happened

Wherever you go online, the Big Computer knows what you want before you want it. It's ready for you and waits patiently, humming. It knows where you will be tomorrow and what you will be doing, and it carefully calibrates the shame you carry with you in hopes that you will buy something to restore your peace of mind.

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing

A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would become of them next.

tanto se apasionan con sus errores estas hermosas adivinas.

I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result.

If the first of July be rainy weather, It will rain, more or less, for four weeks together.

In Westphalia, Germany, little girls set a lady-bird on the end of their forefinger and ask it in rhyme when they will be married; in one year? two years? three years? etc.; and they grow very impatient if the insect lets them count too high before it flies away.

Ceraunoscopy, n. Divination by thunder and lightning.

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.

More Weather Divinations. — Ceraunoscopy, n. Divination by thunder and lightning.

Parental Predictions. — Any astronomer can predict with absolute accuracy just where every star in the universe will be at 11:30 tonight. He can make no such prediction about his teenage daughter.

A Political Warning & Prediction. — Let us guard against every enemy threatening the perpetuity of free republican institutions. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

the Maya knew the time taken by the moon to orbit the earth. Their estimate of this period was 29.528395 days – extremely close to the true figure of 29.530588 days computed by the finest modern methods.11 The Mayan priests also had in their possession very accurate tables for the prediction of solar and lunar eclipses and were aware that these could occur only within plus or minus eighteen days of the node (when the moon's path crosses the apparent path of the sun).

Michael Drosnin

We do not know enough about how the present will lead into the future.

Superiority in midfield, as predicted by Pep, was the key to the game.

Las causas no podemos reconocerlas nunca, todo lo que percibimos son los efectos. Lo que identificamos como causa en realidad no es más que un… presagio. Si suelto este lápiz, se caerá al suelo. Que el hecho de soltarlo constituya la causa de la caída puede creerlo un estudiante, pero yo no. Soltarlo es sencillamente el presagio infalible de la caída.

The Shape of Things to Come.

No matter how many determinants of health we throw in the mix, we will never be able to perfectly predict who will experience good health.

The computer will still be unable to predict whether Princeton, New Jersey, will have sun or rain on a day one month away. At noon the spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the computer will not know about, tiny deviations from the average. By 12:01, those fluctuations will already have created small errors one foot away. Soon the errors will have multiplied to the ten-foot scale, and so on up to the size of the globe.

Given an approximate knowledge of a system's initial conditions and an understanding of natural law, one can calculate the approximate behavior of the system.

Libchaber's spectrum diagrams showed vividly the precise pattern of period-doubling predicted by the theory. The spikes of new frequencies stand out clearly above the experimental noise. Feigenbaum's scaling theory predicted not only when and where the new frequencies would arrive but also how strong they would be-their amplitudes.