Quotes About Probability

Culture cannot be understood in terms of probabilities. To understand culture is to understand, in Michael Schudson's words, the social significance of the statistically insignificant, as well as the seamless web of meanings people draw on to make sense of social situations.

Good luck to you and bad luck to your theories.

Why is it that if you hit a shot to within a tenth of an inch of the hole, it's a great shot, but if it goes in, it's luck?

Understand why casinos and racetracks stay in business - the gambler always loses over the long term.

The probability that we will get into a car accident is a million times higher than the probability we will suffer as a result of terrorist act.

The fact that we don't keep repeating tests in the same arena is not because the probability of the hypothesis showing its falsity in other arenas goes up after it has passed tests in one arena.

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

If there are no spots on a sugar cube then I've just put a dice in my tea.

Keynes's economics – unlike Keynesian economics – was philosophically driven. It was informed by his vision of the 'good life'; it was permeated by his theory of probability. These philosophical foundations were laid early in his life. Philosophy came before economics; and the philosophy of ends came before the philosophy of means.

In deciding what is rational to do, we need to take into account two further considerations independent of probability, which Keynes called 'the weight of argument' and 'moral risk'.

The principle of moral risk suggests that it is more rational to aim for a smaller good which seems more probable of attainment than to aim for a larger one which seems less, when the two courses of action have equal probable goodness. Other things being equal, 'a high weight and the absence of risk increase pro tanto the desirability of the action to which they refer'.

As the geneticist David Searls observed, "The tendency for an event to occur varies inversely with one's preparation for it.

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

We've all heard that millions of monkeys banging on millions of keyboards will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true.

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

El dolor se acumula, decía mi amigo, eso es un hecho, y cuanto mayor sea el dolor menor es la casualidad.

He would never trust to luck that his luck would not desert him. This convolution of logic pleased him.

statistical fiction

The impossible is more believable than the highly improbable.

the Christianity of Christendom, takes this into account; it takes away from Christianity the offense, the paradox, etc., and instead of that introduces, probability, the plainly comprehensible. That is, it transforms Christianity into something entirely different from what it is in the New Testament, yea, into exactly the opposite; and this is the Christianity of Christendom, of us men.

Go jogging? And get hit by a meteor?

The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search the chance of success is zero.

An investment said to have an 80% chance of success sounds far more attractive than one with a 20% chance of failure. The mind can't easily recognize that they are the same.