David J. Hand > Quotes

“Unfortunately, we generally find it difficult to assess very small probabilities. We typically overestimate them (thinking the events more likely than they are) and underestimate very high probabilities.”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“Events don’t actually occur as often as people predict they will. And this in turn is related to hindsight bias (the tendency to see past events as being more predictable than they were at the time), which I’ll discuss shortly.”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“Chaos: when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“Raw data, like raw potatoes, usually require cleaning before use. Ronald A. Thisted”
― David J. Hand, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction

“in real statistical analyses the computer takes over the tedium of arithmetic juggling.”
― David J. Hand, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction

“It makes sense to predict likely future performance from past performance. Indeed, we often don’t have much else to go on. Unfortunately, however, the past can be an uncertain guide to the future.”
― David J. Hand, Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters

“A 2006 study by Amy Barrett and Brent Brodeski showed that “purging of the weakest funds from the Morningstar database boosted apparent returns on average by 1.6 percent per year over the 10-year period [from 1995 to 2004].”
― David J. Hand, Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters

“Smyth’s predictions of the date of the Second Coming, as with everyone else’s predictions of this event, have proved inaccurate.”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“You might have a sense of déjà vu about those first two types of dark data. In a famous news briefing, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nicely characterized them in a punchy sound bite, saying “there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”6 Rumsfeld attracted considerable media ridicule for that convoluted statement, but the criticism was unfair. What he said made very good sense and was certainly true.”
― David J. Hand, Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters

“it is easy to lie with statistics, but easier to lie without them’.”
― David J. Hand, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction

“Although confirmation bias has become the subject of intensive study by psychologists and behavioral economists only recently, it’s been known about for centuries. In his Novum Organum (The New Organon), Francis Bacon, who was a pioneer in laying down the principles of science, said: The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects … men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by.4”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“This recognition – that real statistics is about exploring the unknown, not about tedious arithmetic manipulation – is central to an appreciation of the modern discipline.”
― David J. Hand, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction

“When a particular measure is used as an indicator of the performance of a system, people may choose to target that measure, improving its value but at the cost of other aspects of the system.”
― David J. Hand, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction

“During the 2010 FIFA football World Cup, “Paul the Octopus,” from his tank at the Sea Life Center in Oberhausen, Germany, successfully predicted the outcome of the seven matches of the German national team and the final. “Prediction” took the form of Paul picking one of two boxes, each marked with the flag of one of the competing teams, and each containing food. The probability of getting all these predictions correct is 1 in 28 = 256—so not that startling. And it’s even less startling when we take into account the law of truly large numbers. In fact, in this case, because 1 in 256 is not so small a probability, the numbers don’t even need to be “truly” large. Nonetheless, Paul’s apparent “power” made him an instant media star. He was made an honorary citizen of a town in Spain, and ambassador for England’s 2018 World Cup bid.”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“A grasp of the cause of the colors of the rainbow doesn't detract from its wonder.”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“The evolutionary usefulness of the ability to recognize patterns and then infer the causal relationships they represent is demonstrated by the fact that precisely the same development of “superstitions” occurs in animals.”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“(Admittedly, some people experience synaesthesia, in which they do associate a particular colour or sensation with particular numbers.”
― David J. Hand, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction

“So what is going on? For the men and women separately, the crew had a higher survival rate than the third-class passengers. But overall the crew had a lower survival rate than the third-class passengers. This is not a trick—the numbers are what they are.”
― David J. Hand, Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters

“If you change the way data are used, it is perhaps hardly surprising that behavior in collecting those data changes—a feedback phenomenon of the kind we examine in detail in chapter”
― David J. Hand, Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters

“Physicists and cosmologists have explored ideas like these. For example, Fred C. Adams, of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, investigated varying the gravitational constant, the fine structure constant, and a constant determining nuclear reaction rates. He found that about a quarter of all possible triples of these three values led to stars which would sustain nuclear fusion—like the stars in our universe. As he said, “[W]e conclude that universes with stars are not especially rare (contrary to previous claims).”8”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“When you do change the circumstances under which you collect the data—when you intervene—the data are said to be “experimental.” Experimental data are particularly important, because they can give you information about the counterfactuals mentioned in chapter”
― David J. Hand, Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters

“All this means, first, is that it’s necessary to be very clear about what question you are asking, and, second, that whether data are dark or not will depend on that question. Trite though it may sound, the data you need to collect, the analysis you will undertake, and the answer you will get depend on what you want to know.”
― David J. Hand, Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters

“It’s the very essence of science that its conclusions can change, that is, that its truths are not absolute. The intrinsic good sense of this is contained within the remark reportedly made by the eminent economist John Maynard Keynes, responding to the criticism that he had changed his position on monetary policy during the 1930s Depression: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

“A dice maker agreed with Scarne: “Once in a blue moon you might find a single store die that classes as a perfect, but the chance of finding two of them in a box of 60 and the chance that they would both be sold to the same purchaser as a pair is so small you can forget about it. It never happened.”
― David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day