Quotes About Accuracy

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug (Mark Twain)

A man who goes around with a prophecy-gun ought never to get discouraged: if he will keep up his heart and fire at everything he sees, he is bound to hit something by and by.

Yes, a genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is five hundred years away easier than he can a thing that's only five hundred seconds off.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Man muß die Tatsachen kennen, bevor man sie verdrehen kann.

The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.

Seien Sie vorsichtig mit Gesundheitsbüchern - Sie könnten an einem Druckfehler sterben.

La diferencia entre la palabra acertada y la palabra casi acertada es la que hay entre la luz de un rayo y una luciérnaga.

Wenn du die Wahrheit sagst, brauchst du kein gutes Gedächtnis.

It was a tradition for Frau Holtzapfel, one of their neighbors, to spit on the Hubermanns' door every time she walked past. The front door was only meters from the gate, and let's just say that Frau Holtzapfel had the distance—and the accuracy.

he never knows what he's saying. He says everything, so he has to be right some of the time.

Subestimarse es algo tan alejado de la verdad como exagerar las propias facultades.

Dogs don't make mistakes.

Lack of the power to discriminate is no less evident in the sciences, namely in the tenacious life of false and refuted theories. Once come into general credit, they continue to defy truth for centuries. - On Various Subjects

A study led by the Harvard researcher Nicholas Christakis asked the doctors of almost five hundred terminally ill patients to estimate how long they thought their patient would survive, and then followed the patients. Sixty-three per cent of doctors overestimated survival time. Just seventeen per cent underestimated it. The average estimate was five hundred and thirty per cent too high. And, the better the doctors knew their patients, the more likely they were to err.

So Pabrai added the following checkpoint to his list: when analysing a company, stop and confirm that you've asked yourself whether the revenues might be overstated or understated due to boom or bust conditions.

Whereas today people often understate their age to census takers, studies of past censuses have revealed that they used to overstate it.

He wanted no careless errors; the stakes were too high.

In most cases, it wasn't technology that failed. Rather, the physicians did not consider the correct diagnosis in the first place.

Doctors with high confidence in a judgment they made proved no more accurate than doctors with low confidence.

Faulty memory and distraction are a particular danger in what engineers call all-or-none processes: whether running to the store to buy ingredients for a cake, preparing an airplane for takeoff, or evaluating a sick person in the hospital, if you miss just one key thing, you might as well not have made the effort at all. A

A study led by the sociologist Nicholas Christakis asked the doctors of almost five hundred terminally ill patients to estimate how long they thought their patient would survive and then followed the patients. Sixty-three percent of doctors overestimated their patient's survival time. Just 17 percent underestimated it. The average estimate was 530 percent too high. And the better the doctors knew their patients, the more likely they were to err.

And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person's most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against the grain of logic and probability. When I have trusted and followed their direction, they have never been wrong. I don't know how or why. But I know that every significant experience-positive or negative-sharpens them and makes them more accurate.

In fact, you can be a very honest person and yet not be living a truthful life. And not even realize it. This matters because stripping away all the inaccuracies, misunderstandings, and untruths that surround you is exactly how you can overcome anything at all. Truth is accuracy. Without accuracy, you can't expect to manifest large, specific changes in your life.