Statistician Quotes

“The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard”
― John Wilder Tukey

“I keep notations, like my mother. She had notebook after notebook of trials and errors, all written in her perfect penmanship on quad-ruled pages, a square for each letter to nest in. My journal is a thick black hardcover with unlined pages. Like her, I'm a technician, a statistician, copiously documenting slight variations in texture, color, taste. I'm a chemist. A quarter cup of rye flour added to the white wheat gives a sweeter flavor. A half teaspoon more salt and 78 percent hydration of the dough result in those coveted large, irregular rooms in the crumb. Mastering formulas, not recipes, in the quest for the perfect loaf. Xavier tells me not to bother. He doesn't believe in perfection. "Forget the ingredients. Forget the environment. 'You' are different each day. You can't replicate yourself. Your hands are stronger, or weaker. Your mind thinks different thoughts while kneading. Life is all over you, changing you. All that goes into the making comes out in the bread. It won't be the same from one batch to the next. Not ever."
"It'll be close, though."
"Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."
He's the artist. He makes me brave enough to try. With his encouragement, I've focused on the creativity of bread, writing my own recipes, exploring nontraditional flavors and shapes. Not all of them turn out well, but he tastes my failures with me, with layers of warm butter.”
― Christa Parrish, Stones For Bread

“Early in the speech, when Sanzite had been describing the impressive gains in average income, a man had stood up and shouted “What About the Median?” That man had been quickly suppressed, and Sanzite had continued.

A few minutes later, Sanzite had moved on to the extraordinary increases in average life expectancy, when dozens of people began the chant. “What about the Median? What about the Median? What about the Median?” Clearly the screening process for attendees had massively failed.

The infoterrorists had somehow brought in materials to cement themselves to the fixed theater chairs, so removing them was slow.

And worst of all had been Sanzite’s mistake. “Seems everybody’s a statistician these days,” he quipped into the live microphone, and inadvertently coined the name of a new movement.

The version seen by over ninety nine percent of viewers was sanitized, but the damage had been done. Recordings of Sanzite’s remark, with the chant in the background, still surfaced from time to time.”
― James R. Wells, The Great Symmetry