Quotes About Accuracy

Judgments are both less noisy and less biased when those who make them are well trained, are more intelligent, and have the right cognitive style.

El mundo que imaginamos no es una réplica precisa de la realidad;

Despite all the evidence in favor of mechanical and algorithmic prediction methods, and despite the rational calculus that clearly shows the value of incremental improvements in predictive accuracy, many decision makers will reject decision-making approaches that deprive them of the ability to exercise their intuition.

There is essentially no evidence of situations in which people do very poorly and models do very well with the same information.

judgments of similarity and probability are not constrained by the same logical rules. It is entirely acceptable for judgments of similarity to be unaffected by base rates and also by the possibility that the description was inaccurate, but anyone who ignores base rates and the quality of evidence in probability assessments will certainly make mistakes.

the strong conclusion that simple mechanical rules were generally superior to human judgment

The more extreme the original score, the more regression we expect, because an extremely good score suggests a very lucky day. The regressive prediction is reasonable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed.

high subjective confidence is not to be trusted as an indicator of accuracy (low confidence could be more informative).

Wherever there is judgment, there is noise—and more of it than we think.

Klein and I eventually agreed on an important principle: the confidence that people have in their intuitions is not a reliable guide to their validity.

The number of studies reporting comparisons of clinical and statistical predictions has increased to roughly two hundred, but the score in the contest between algorithms and humans has not changed. About 60% of the studies have shown significantly better accuracy for the algorithms. The other comparisons scored a draw in accuracy, but a tie is tantamount to a win for the statistical rules, which are normally much less expensive to use than expert judgment.

The only ill-chosen word in that sentence was "quasi.

Unlike people, numbers never lied.

Beretta 92FS

The trouble is that we often don't remember them correctly.

A translator ought to be faithful, but is not bound down to being literal.

numerical precision is the very soul of science, and its attainment affords the best, perhaps the only criterion of the truth of theories and the correctness of experiments.

Many a statistic is false on its face. It gets by only because the magic of numbers brings about a suspension of common sense.

I kept reverting to my basic question: how does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don't have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes—sometimes correctly and sometimes (many times!) incorrectly?

If you don't know it, don't write it.

Over the years I have been told many secret methods for determining the sex of day-old ducklings. When tested, these techniques have proven to be only 50 percent accurate at best.

Pastors who do not know Greek are forced to borrow their ideas from others. They are slaves to the commentators, but have no means to check their accuracy. The best tools of interpretation are beyond their reach. Not even the English translations they use are completely trustworthy. Worst of all, without thorough training in Greek they may discover that they are passing on in the name of God their own ignorance, based upon erroneous interpretations.

We're not talking about historical accuracy, we're talking about art. I've set in motion a geometric inevitability. If I start chiseling there, chipping here, the whole form is compromised.

Pender laughed. "Verify? In this day and age? Who cares about verifying anything? It's all about the speed. Who gets there first defines the truth. You know that as well as any man living.