Quotes About Probability

It's not about the pace, it's about the direction we've set. The pace is of course a function of many factors, including the magnitude of the supply shock. But what's probably more important is the probability of the supply shock translating into sustainable embedded inflation.

Swimming a 50 m is like playing the pokies: you push a button, and you never know what is going come up; it may be a mixed bag.

People do get hurt by jellyfish, as they do by sharks and spiders, and I have great sympathy for the anguish and pain these effects may cause, but if you pay any attention to the statistics it is clear that nature is not out to get us.

My grandfather used to say that everyone alive has already beaten the craziest odds, just being born. Like one in a trillion. Your parents could have had a million different kids, but they had you. And before that could happen, your parents had to be born themselves, and their parents had to be born.

Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us.

When it is not in our power to determine what it true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

c'est une vérité très certaine que, lorsqu'il n'est pas en notre pouvoir de discerner les plus vraies opinions, nous devons suivre les plus probables partie 3, para 3)

When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

What men call chance is simply their ignorance of causes; if the statement that something had happened by chance were to mean that it had no cause, it would be a contradiction in terms.

In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.

Don't try to out-guess the markets because you will not be successful in the long term, and it will cost you dearly. Control what you can control: costs, taxes, risk. Then let the markets take care of the rest. This approach has the highest probability of financial success.

Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which of two alternatives is more probable? A. Linda is a bank teller. B. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

PROBLEM 1. Assume yourself richer by $300 than you are today. You are offered a choice between A. A sure gain of $100, or [72%] B. A 50% chance to gain $200 and a 50% chance to lose $0. [28%] PROBLEM 2. Assume yourself richer by $500 than you are today. You are offered a choice between A. A sure loss of $100, or [36%] B. A 50% chance to lose $200 and a 50% chance to lose $0.

Many start with unrealistic expectations about the chance of success: the vast majority believe their chance of success to be far above average, and a third or so believe their success is a sure thing (Cooper, Woo, and Dunkelberg, 1988)!

In forming your plan for your future you need to distinguish three different questions: What is possible? What is likely to happen? What is desirable to have happen?

The prospect of a change is a green spot in the desert, and the probability of great events and exciting scenes creates a feeling of delight, and sets life in motion, so as to give a pleasure which any one not in the same state would be unable to explain.

It's been my experience that worse-case scenarios are very rare indeed. Rare to the extend that you can almost count on them not happening.

Chance was just an order that you hadn't yet perceived.

Oppenheimer first described the so-called tunnel effect whereby an uncertainly located particle sails through the electrical barrier around the nucleus on a light breeze of probability, existing—in particle terms—then ceasing to exist, then instantly existing again on the other side.549 But George Gamow, the antic Russian, lecturing in Cambridge, devised the tunnel-effect equations that the experimenters used.

The problem with trying to gauge mathematical probability was that it presupposed the circumstance you were observing was governed by chance.

What was an actuary? Juliet wondered. It sounded as if it belonged in a zoo, along with a cassowary and a dromedary.)

A good rule of thumb was that the more noise someone was making the less likely they were to die.

A theoretical chance. Atlas Brookings may make a big thing of it, but it's less than two percent. That's all. Their intake of unlifteds is less than two percent.