Quotes about Statistics

Any time that we move from personal names to abstract labels or graphs or statistics, we are less in touch with reality and diminished in our capacity to deal with what is best and at the center of life. Yet we are encouraged on every side to do just that.

Do not trust any statistics you did not fake yourself.

The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.

Statistics are like a drunk with a lampost: used more for support than illumination.

The truth is that others judge us. More than that, they evaluate the truth of the Gospel by what they see of our lives and our integrity. [We] must make every effort to be above all suspicion in the matter of finances and statistics. We are not only accountable to God's people, but also to our Master (see Acts 24:16).

That's nearly 600 pounds for every person in the country. And we're not even the biggest consumers of the stuff—that would be China, which installed more concrete in the first 16 years of the 21st century than the United States did in the entire 20th century!

Getting all the world's electricity from clean sources won't be easy. Today, fossil fuels account for two-thirds of all electricity generated worldwide. (bp Statistical Review of World Energy 2020)

Nuclear power kills far, far fewer people than cars do. For that matter, it kills far fewer people than any fossil fuel.

The actual number of atheists is quite small outside of Europe and Manhattan.

You play against an opponent so much the numbers got to match at some point! I played against the Raiders six years straight pretty much. I played against them more than any team I've ever played.

While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will be up to, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.