Quotes About Random

Bias and noise—systematic deviation and random scatter—are different components of error.

A correlation of .30 implies that you would find the stronger CEO leading the stronger firm in about 60% of the pairs—an improvement of a mere 10 percentage points over random guessing, hardly grist for the hero worship of CEOs we so often witness.

Amos and I called our first joint article "Belief in the Law of Small Numbers." We explained, tongue-in-cheek, that "intuitions about random sampling appear to satisfy the law of small numbers, which asserts that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well." We also included a strongly worded recommendation that researchers regard their "statistical intuitions with proper suspicion and replace impression formation by computation whenever possible.

But the cadet was probably just lucky on that particular attempt and therefore likely to deteriorate regardless of whether or not he was praised. Similarly, the instructor would shout into a cadet's earphones only when the cadet's performance was unusually bad and therefore likely to improve regardless of what the instructor did. The instructor had attached a causal interpretation to the inevitable fluctuations of a random process.

Furthermore, System 2 has no control over the effect and no knowledge of it. The participants who have been exposed to random or absurd anchors (such as Gandhi's death at age 144) confidently deny that this obviously useless information could have influenced their estimate, and they are wrong.

It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but everything that happens happens for no real reason.

The purely random sample is the only kind that can be examined with confidence by means of statistical theory, but there is one things wrong with it. It is so difficult and expensive to obtain for many uses that sheer cost eliminates it. A more economical substitute, which is almost universally used in such fields as opinion polling and market research, is called stratified random sampling.

The purely random sample is the only kind that can be examined with entire confidence by means of statistical theory, but there is one thing wrong with it. It is so difficult and expensive to obtain for many uses that sheer cost eliminates it. A more economical substitute, which is almost universally used in such fields as opinion polling and market research, is called stratified random sampling.

The basic sample is the kind called "random." It is selected by pure chance from the "universe," a word by which the statistician means the whole of which the sample is a part.

Rewards and penalties are totally random; knaves thrive and saints go hungry.

When the payoff for organizing violence at a large scale tumbles, the payoff from violence at a smaller scale is likely to jump. Violence will become more random and localized. Organized crime will grow in scope.

Understand, by saying 'God,' I am merely using 'God' as a reference to long-term pattern we can't decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly like— But—maybe not so random and impersonal as all that, if you get me. […] The point is maybe that the point is too big to see or work round to on our own.

Fate is cruel but maybe not random. Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and gravel to it.

Now, actors and scenery are fully imbued with the general tiresomeness of all material things; in the random landslide to chaos they are particularly slippery and hard to check;

He had extracted himself from the Cambridge one-way system by the usual method, which involved going round and round it faster and faster until he achieved a sort of escape velocity and flew off at a tangent in a random direction, which he was now trying to identify and correct for.

What did you say, Arthur? I said, how the hell did you get here? I was a row of dots flowing randomly through the Universe. Have you met Thor? He makes thunder. Hello, said Arthur. I expect that must be very interesting. Hi, said Thor, it is.

anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately.

Never throw the letter Q into a privet bush.

And that reminds me: Random, I forbid you to marry a Vogon! RANDOM: You what? ARTHUR: Nothing. Just fulfilling a promise I made to myself a long time ago.

I was a row of dots flowing randomly through the Universe. Have you met Thor? He makes thunder.

Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression "it turns out" to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is.

thousand seven hundred and nine to one against. By a totally staggering coincidence that is also the

Think of a number, any number." "Er, five," said the mattress. "Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?" The

The trouble with trying to make the right accident happen is that it won't. That is not what "accident" means. The accident that eventually occurred was not what he had planned at all.