John

“When we expand our sample to include events further apart from us in time and space, it often means that we will encounter cases in which the relationships we are studying did not hold up as well as we are accustomed to. The model will seem to be less powerful. It will look less impressive in a PowerPoint presentation (or a journal article or a blog post). We will be forced to acknowledge that we know less about the world than we thought we did. Our personal and professional incentives almost always discourage us from doing this. We forget—or we willfully ignore—that our models are simplifications of the world. We figure that if we make a mistake, it will be at the margin.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't

“Kory-Kory's prompt explanation and his attributing the work to a divine origin, at once convinced me that neither he nor the rest of his country-men knew anything about them.”
― Anonymous