Quotes About Analysis

I felt strongly that marketing managers, in order to make better marketing decisions, needed to analyze markets and competition in systems terms, explicating the forces at work and their various interdependencies.

I came to the conclusion that an enormous amount of research was needed to form an opinion on anything, and therefore abandoned politics altogether as a topic of conversation.

books are a load of crap

Space and resources preclude an exhaustive or even an extensive comparative

and change within the British polity, I will stress the significance of the political culture. Before we proceed to an analysi

history is our attempt to reconstruct the past from the evidence that remains

The most complex analyses grow beautifully simple as they become public objects.

The duty of the historian is not to make the facts, but to discover them, and then to construct his theory wide enough to give them all comfortable room.

The idea of "character" as used by personality analysts is not altogether clear, but its usefulness is scarcely in doubt. There seems to be general agreement on four attributes. First, character is a historical product. "The character as a whole," writes Fenichel, "reflects the individual's historical development."[8] Character is the "ego's habitual ways of reacting." In this sense every individual has a unique character.

Second, character is in some sense an integrated product, as is suggested by the term "character-structure." There is a discoverable pattern in the way the ego is organized; and the existence of such a pattern is the basis of character analysis.

statisticians sleeping with their feet in an oven and their head in a freezer because the average temperature is comfortable.

Forget the old advice to think twice. Superforecasters often think thrice—and sometimes they are just warming up to do a deeper-dive analysis.

The foundations of our decision making were gravely flawed," McNamara wrote in his autobiography. "We failed to analyze our assumptions critically, then or later."5

The difference between heavyweights and amateurs, she said, is that the heavyweights know the difference between a 60?40 bet and a 40?60 bet.

It's a rare day when a journalist says, "The market rose today for any one of a hundred different reasons, or a mix of them, so no one knows.

produce forecast-wrecking

was one of the worst—arguably the worst—intelligence failure in modern history.

Snap judgments are sometimes essential. As Daniel Kahneman puts it, "System 1 is designed to jump to conclusions from little evidence."13

The politicians would be blind men arguing over the colors of the rainbow. If the government had subjected its policy "to a randomized controlled trial then we might, by now, have known its true worth and be some way ahead in our thinking," Cochrane observed.

two hundred studies—has shown that in most cases statistical algorithms beat subjective judgment, and in the handful of studies where they don't, they usually tie. Given that algorithms are quick and cheap, unlike subjective judgment, a tie supports using the algorithm. The point is now indisputable: when you have a well-validated statistical algorithm, use it

WE ARE ALL forecasters. When we think about changing jobs, getting married, buying a home, making an investment, launching a product, or retiring, we decide based on how we expect the future will unfold. These expectations are forecasts. Often we do our own forecasting.

Superforecasting does require minimum levels of intelligence, numeracy, and knowledge of the world, but anyone who reads serious books about psychological research probably has those prerequisites. So

in most cases statistical algorithms beat subjective judgment, and in the handful of studies where they don't, they usually tie. Given

The point is now indisputable: when you have a well-validated statistical algorithm, use it.