Statisticians

"Statistical criteria should (1) be sensitive to change in the specific factors tested, (2) be insensitive to changes, of a magnitude likely to occur in practice, in extraneous factors."

"We have a large reservoir of engineers (and scientists) with a vast background of engineering know how. They need to learn statistical methods that can tap into the knowledge. Statistics used as a catalyst to engineering creation will, I believe, always result in the fastest and most economical progress…"

"All models are wrong; some models are useful."

"One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice."

"Since all models are wrong the scientist cannot obtain a "correct" one by excessive elaboration. On the contrary following William of Occam he should seek an economical description of natural phenomena. Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist so overelaboration and overparameterization is often the mark of mediocrity."

"The researcher hoping to break new ground in the theory of experimental design should involve himself in the design of actual experiments. The investigator who hopes to revolutionize decision theory should observe and take part in the making of important decisions."

"For the theory-practice iteration to work, the scientist must be, as it were, mentally ambidextrous; fascinated equally on the one hand by possible meanings, theories, and tentative models to be induced from data and the practical reality of the real world, and on the other with the factual implications deducible from tentative theories, models and hypotheses."

"A man in daily muddy contact with field experiments could not be expected to have much faith in any direct assumption of independently distributed normal errors."

"The penalty for scientific irrelevance is, of course, that the statistician's work is ignored by the scientific community."

"An innovative discussion of building empirical models and the fitting of surfaces to data. Introduces the general philosophy of response surface methodology, and details least squares for response surface work, factorial designs at two levels, fitting second-order models, adequacy of estimation and the use of transformation, occurrence and elucidation of ridge systems, and more. Some results are presented for the first time. Includes real-life exercises, nearly all with solutions."

"A mechanistic model has the following advantages: 1. It contributes to our scientific understanding of the phenomenon under study. 2. It usually provides a better basis for extrapolation (at least to conditions worthy of further experimental investigation if not through the entire range of all input variables). 3. It tends to be parsimonious (i.e, frugal) in the use of parameters and to provide better estimates of the response"

"Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful."

"Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful."

"I want to tell you how I got to be a statistician. I was, of course, born in England and in 1939... when war broke out in September of that year, although I was close to getting a degree in Chemistry, I abandoned that and joined the Army. They put me in the Engineers (and when I see a bridge I still catch myself calculating where I would put the charges to blow it up). Before I could actually do any of that I was moved to a highly secret experimental station in the south of England. At the time they were bombing London every night and our job was to help to find out what to do if, one night, they used poisonous gas. Some of England's best scientists were there. There were a lot of experiments with small animals, I was a lab assistant making biochemical determinations, my boss was a professor of physiology dressed up as a colonel, and I was dressed up as a staff sergeant. The results I was getting were very variable and I told my colonel that what we really needed was a statistician. He said "we can't get one, what do you know about it?" I said "Nothing, I once tried to read a book about it by someone called R. A. Fisher but I didn't understand it". He said "You've read the book so you better do it", so I said, "Yes sir""

"[Box's 1960 paper Fitting empirical data is] a mature exposition of an important branch of statistics, to which the author has made great contributions. One feature of particular interest is practical discussion of genuinely nonlinear fitting problems and their solution with the help of tact and a special, publicly available, IBM-704 program. Another is insightful comments on the role of prior distributions in statistics."

"George Box is, in the field of the quality sciences, the consummate ‘Renaissance man’ who has made significant and enduring contributions to the profession of quality control and the allied arts and sciences... [His] contributions encompass considerable scope and have already had lasting effect."

"I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone — the chances that all the functions of an individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity."

"There is, then, in this analysis of variance no indication of any other than innate and heritable factors at work. (Coining of the phrase ‘analysis of variance’.)"

"(Coining the phrase ‘test of significance’): Critical tests of this kind may be called tests of significance, and when such tests are available we may discover whether a second sample is or is not significantly different from the first."

"Fairly large print is a real antidote to stiff reading."

"I believe that no one who is familiar, either with mathematical advances in other fields, or with the range of special biological conditions to be considered, would ever conceive that everything could be summed up in a single mathematical formula, however complex."

"However, perhaps the main point is that you are under no obligation to analyse variance into its parts if it does not come apart easily, and its unwillingness to do so naturally indicates that one’s line of approach is not very fruitful."

"The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic."

"(Coining phrase "null hypothesis") In relation to any experiment we may speak of this hypothesis as the “null hypothesis,” and it should be noted that the null hypothesis is never proved or established, but is possibly disproved, in the course of experimentation. Every experiment may be said to exist only in order to give the facts a chance of disproving the null hypothesis."

"In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research. By temperament and training, the research worker is the antithesis of the pundit. What he is actively and constantly aware of is his ignorance, not his knowledge; the insufficiency of his concepts, of the terms and phrases in which he tries to excogitate his problems: not their final and exhaustive sufficiency. He is, therefore, usually only a good teacher for the few who wish to use their mind as a workshop, rather than a warehouse.*"

"Apart from sex linkage, we know almost nothing at present of linkage in man. Yet it is certain that every defect determined by a single factor must be located in one or other of twenty-three [sic] linkage groups. Each defect must therefore be linked in inheritance with numerous other observable traits, and with some of them is probably linked closely. The search for such linkage will certainly be lengthy, and at first, disappointing."

"The academic mind, as we know, is sometimes capable of assuming an aggressive attitude. The official mind, on the contrary, is and has to be, expert in the art of self-defence."

"To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of."

"Natural Selection is not evolution."

"No practical biologist interested in sexual reproduction would be led to work out the detailed consequences experienced by organisms having three or more sexes; yet what else should he do if he wishes to understand why the sexes are, in fact, always two?"

"No efforts of mine could avail to make the book easy reading."

"We may consequently state the fundamental theorem of Natural Selection in the form : The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time."

"Professor Eddington has recently remarked that 'The law that entropy always increases — the second law of thermodynamics — holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature'. It is not a little instructive that so similar a law [the fundamental theorem of natural selection] should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences."

"[We are now] in a position to judge of the validity of the objection which has been made, that the principle of Natural Selection depends on a succession of favourable chances. The objection is more in the nature of an innuendo than of a criticism, for it depends for its force upon the ambiguity of the word chance, in its popular uses. The income derived from a Casino by its proprietor may, in one sense, be said to depend upon a succession of favourable chances, although the phrase contains a suggestion of improbability more appropriate to the hopes of the patrons of his establishment. It is easy without any very profound logical analysis to perceive the difference between a succession of favourable deviations from the laws of chance, and on the other hand, the continuous and cumulative action of these laws. It is on the latter that the principle of Natural Selection relies."

"In organisms of all kinds the young are launched upon their careers endowed with a certain amount of biological capital derived from their parents. This varies enormously in amount in different species, but, in all, there has been, before the offspring is able to lead an independent existence, a certain expenditure of nutriment in addition, almost universally, to some expenditure of time or activity, which the parents are induced by their instincts to make for the advantage of their young. Let us consider the reproductive value of these offspring at the moment when this parental expenditure on their behalf has just ceased. If we consider the aggregate of an entire generation of such offspring it is clear that the total reproductive value of the males in this group is exactly equal to the total value of all the females, because each sex must supply half the ancestry of all future generations of the species. From this it follows that the sex ratio will so adjust itself, under the influence of Natural Selection, that the total parental expenditure incurred in respect of children of each sex, shall be equal; for if this were not so and the total expenditure incurred in producing males, for instance, were less than the total expenditure incurred in producing females, then since the total reproductive value of the males is equal to that of the females, it would follow that those parents, the innate tendencies of which caused them to produce males in excess, would, for the same expenditure, produce a greater amount of reproductive value; and in consequence would be the progenitors of a larger fraction of future generations than would parents having a congenital bias towards the production of females. Selection would thus raise the sex-ratio until the expenditure upon males became equal to that upon females."

"He is an ambitious politician of a type likely to become prevalent in a system avowedly guided by a rigid ideology, who hopes to use the ideological dogmas to which he finds his colleagues committed as levers for his own advancement in the party and in the state."

"No, I cannot believe in the light of this speech that the reward of Lysenko's triumphant career is the advance of scientific knowledge; nor that it is the prosperity of poor peasants. The reward he is so eagerly grasping is Power, power for himself, power to threaten, power to torture, power to kill."

"After all, it is a common weakness of young authors to put too much into their papers."

"… the so-called co-efficient of heritability, which I regard as one of those unfortunate short-cuts, which have often emerged in biometry for lack of a more thorough analysis of the data."

"Available scientific knowledge provides a firm basis for believing that the groups of mankind differ in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development."

"Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability."

"...it was Darwin’s chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly improbable. … Let the reader … attempt to calculate the prior probability that a hundred generations of his ancestry in the direct male line should each have left at least one son. The odds against such a contingency as it would have appeared to his hundredth ancestor (about the time of King Solomon) would require for their expression forty- four figures of the decimal notation; yet this improbable event has certainly happened."

"Faith Is Not Credulity."

"… the best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments, which seems to be equally true in the intellectual and in the moral sense."

"More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track."

"The million, million, million … to one chance happens once in a million, million, million … times no matter how surprised we may be that it results in us."

"[...] the uncontrolled causes which may influence the result are always strictly innumerable."

"Before deciding anything I wrote to his tutor at Caius college... about his mathematical ability. The answer was that he could have been a first class mathematician had he "stuck to the ropes" but he would not... It took me a very short time to realize that he was more than a man of great ability, he was in fact a genius who must be retained."

"A very able "manipulative" mathematician, Fisher enjoys a real mastery in evaluating complicated multiple integrals. In addition, he has a remarkable talent in the most difficult field of approaching problems of empirical research. As a result, his lifework includes a series of valuable contributions giving exact distributions of a variety of statistics, such as the correlation coefficient, the central χ2 with due allowance for degrees of freedom, the noncentral χ2, the quotient of two χ2, etc., etc."

"He has made contributions to many areas of science; among them are agronomy, anthropology, astronomy, bacteriology, botany, economics, forestry, meteorology, psychology, public health, and-above all-genetics, in which he is recognized as one of the leaders. Out of this varied scientific research and his skill in mathematics, he has evolved systematic principles for the interpretation of empirical data; and he has founded a science of experimental design. On the foundations he has laid down, there has been erected a structure of statistical techniques that are used whenever people attempt to learn about nature from experiment and observation."

"A book that I rate only second in importance in evolution theory to Darwin's Origin (this as joined with its supplement Of Man), and also rate as undoubtedly one of the greatest books of the twentieth century."

"This is perhaps the most important book on evolutionary genetics ever written."

"As a child, R. A. Fisher was fascinated by mathematics, statistics, and astronomy. His vision was severely impaired, but this was no impediment to his scholarship: He had tutors who would read mathematics to him, and young Fisher would picture the problems in his head. He eventually became so good at visualizing the solutions that he would frequently present his answers with absolutely no proof, saying that the solution was so obvious it didn’t need to be proven. Gosset remarked that these ‘obvious’ solutions to problems were generally not obvious to anyone else until they’d slogged through the math and could see on paper what Fisher saw in his head."

"I am genuinely sorry for scientists of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he loved to drink in the evening. And on the credit side you gained a cherished memory of English spoken in a Shakespearean style and delivered in the manner of a Spanish grandee."

"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion."

"Uncontrolled variation is the enemy of quality."

"That's all window dressing. That's not fundamental. That's not getting at change and the transformation that must take place. Sure we have to solve problems. Certainly stamp out the fire. Stamp out the fire and get nowhere. Stamp out the fires puts us back to where we were in the first place. Taking action on the basis of results without theory of knowledge, without theory of variation, without knowledge about a system. Anything goes wrong, do something about it, overreacting; acting without knowledge, the effect is to make things worse. With the best of intentions and best efforts, managing by results is, in effect, exactly the same, as Dr. Myron Tribus put it, while driving your automobile, keeping your eye on the rear view mirror, what would happen? And that's what management by results is, keeping your eye on results."

"The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!"

"Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn."

"Blame the process, not the people."

"They realized that the gains that you get by statistical methods are gains that you get without new machinery, without new people. Anybody can produce quality if he lowers his production rate. That is not what I am talking about. Statistical thinking and statistical methods are to Japanese production workers, foremen, and all the way through the company, a second language. In statistical control you have a reproducible product hour after hour, day after day. And see how comforting that is to management, they now know what they can produce, they know what their costs are going to be."

"I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don't know what to copy!"

"In Europe and in America, people are now more interested in the cost of quality and in systems of quality-audit. But in Japan, we are keeping very strong interest to improve quality by use of methods which you started....when we improve quality we also improve productivity, just as you told us in 1950 would happen."

"Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them."

"Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs."

"Quality comes not from inspection, but from improvement of the production process."

"Part of America's industrial problems is the aim of its corporate managers. Most American executives think they are in the business to make money, rather than products or service...The Japanese corporate credo, on the other hand, is that a company should become the world's most efficient provider of whatever product and service it offers. Once it becomes the world leader and continues to offer good products, profits follow."

"The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they were taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to the management."

"We cannot rely on mass inspection to improve quality, though there are times when 100 percent inspection is necessary. As Harold S. Dodge said many years ago, 'You cannot inspect quality into a product.' The quality is there or it isn't by the time it's inspected."

"Foremost is the principle that the purpose of consumer research is to understand the customer's needs and wishes, and thus design product and service that will provide better living for him in the future. A second principle is that no one can guess the future loss of business from a dissatisfied customer..."

"The aim of this book is to try to explain to top management of America that their job is to improve competitive position. One need not be an economist to understand from the papers that many American products are not competitive at home or abroad, lost to foreign invasion, causing unemployment at home. Failure of management to plan for the future and to foresee problems has nurtured waste of manpower, of materials and of machine time, all of which raise the manufacturers costs and the price the purchaser must pay. The consumer is not always willing to subsidize this waste."

"Loss of market begets unemployment. Emphasis has been on short-term profit, to the undernourishment of plans that might generate new product and service that would keep the company alive and provide jobs and more jobs. It is no longer socially acceptable performance to lose market and to dump hourly workers on to the heap of unemployed."

"The 14 points [for quality control] apply anywhere, to small organizations as well as to large ones...:"

"Statistical methods had taken fire in America around 1942, following a series of ten-day intensive courses for engineers, initiated by Stanford University on a suggestion from this author. The war department also gave courses at factories of suppliers. Brilliant applications attracted much attention, but the flare of statistical methods by themselves, in an atmosphere in which management did not know their responsibilities, burned, sputtered, fizzled and died out."

"Why waste knowledge?... No company can afford to waste knowledge. Failure of management to breakdown barriers between activities... is one way to waste knowledge. People that are not working together are not contributing their best to the company. People as they work together, feeling secure in the job reinforce their knowledge and efforts. Their combined output, when they are working together, is more than the sum of their separate"

"The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in. The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people. Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to."

"The various segments of the system of profound knowledge proposed here cannot be separated. They interact with each other. Thus, knowledge of psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation."

"A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management."

"What is a system? A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment. (We are of course talking here about a man-made system.)"

"It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of a specific activity or method. It must always relate to a better life for everyone."

"Choice of aim is clearly a matter of clarification of values, especially on the choice between possible options."

"A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centres, and thus destroy the system. . . . The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. We can not afford the destructive effect of competition."

"To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge - knowledge for leadership of transformation."

"Management’s job. It is management’s job to direct the efforts of all components toward the aim of the system. The first step is clarification: everyone in the organization must understand the aim of the system, and how to direct his efforts toward it. Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit centre."

". . .the principle that where there is fear, there will be wrong figures. . . ."

"What is the variation trying to tell us about a process, about the people in the process?"

"Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge."

"Experience by itself teaches nothing...Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence without theory there is no learning."

"In God we trust. All others must bring data."

"Total Quality Management (TQM) in the Department of Defense is a strategy for continuously improving performance at every level, and in all areas of responsibility. It combines fundamental management techniques, existing improvement efforts, and specialized technical tools under a disciplined structure focused on continuously improving all processes. Improved performance is directed at satisfying such broad goals as cost, quality, schedule, and mission need and suitability. Increasing user satisfaction is the overriding objective. The TQM effort builds on the pioneering work of Dr. W. E. Deming, Dr. J. M. Juran, and others, and benefits from both private and public sector experience with continuous process improvement."

"Two of my favourite current management writers are Americans – Clayton Christensen and Peter Senge. My all-time favourite gurus are Peter Drucker, who became a greatly admired friend, and W. Edwards Deming. The thing that set these people apart from many other business commentators is that they didn’t propose any all - encompassing theories, they simply told it like it is. The fact is that life cannot be summarised as a simple set of rules; it’s far too complicated for that and it’s always changing. Unfortunately, all-encompassing panaceas do seem to be popular and certainly sell books, which is why I so value the objectivity of thought that each of these people brought to the debate."

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

"Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it."

"Education can help us only if it produces “whole men”. The truly educated man is not a man who knows a bit of everything, not even the man who knows all the details of all subjects (if such a thing were possible): the “whole man” in fact, may have little detailed knowledge of facts and theories, he may treasure the Encyclopædia Britannica because “she knows and he needn’t”, but he will be truly in touch with the centre. He will not be in doubt about his basic convictions, about his view on the meaning and purpose of his life. He may not be able to explain these matters in words, but the conduct of his life will show a certain sureness of touch which stems from this inner clarity."

"The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war."

"Scientific and technological “solutions” which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their superficial attraction."

"That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of “bread and circuses” can compensate for the damage done—these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence—because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society."

"The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure."

"It is doubly chimerical to build peace on economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict."

"It might be thought that the I Ching and the oracles are metaphysical while the computer model is "real"; but the fact remains that a machine to foretell the future is based on metaphysical assumptions of a very definite kind. It is based on the implicit assumption that "the future is already here," that it exists already in a determinate form, that it requires merely good instruments and good techniques to get it into focus and make it visible. The reader will agree that this is a very far-reaching metaphysical assumption which seems to go against all direct personal experience."

"The modern economist … is used to measuring the “standard of living” by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is “better off” than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption."

"The ownership and the consumption of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist economics is the systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production—labour and capital—as the means. The former, in short, tries to maximise human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while the latter tries to maximise consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort."

"From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a 'disutility'; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice."

"From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the sub-human, surrender to the forces of evil."

"The Buddhist view, “takes the function of work to be at least threefold”: “to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.”"

"To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence."

"Anything that we can destroy, but are unable to make is, in a sense, sacred, and all our 'explanations' of it do not explain anything."

"Small is beautiful"

"I didn't care about the statistics in anything else. I didn't, and don't pay any attention to the statistics of the stock market, the weather, the crime rate, the gross national product, the circulation of magazines, the ebb and flow of literacy among football fans and how many people are going to starve to death before the year 2050 if I don't start adopting them for $3.69 a month; just baseball. Now why is that? It is because baseball statistics, unlike the statistics in any other area, have acquired the powers of language."

"Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break."

"There will always be people who are ahead of the curve, and people who are behind the curve. But knowledge moves the curve."

"Count wherever you can."

"One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands."

"I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of cosmic order expressed by the "Law of Frequency of Error." The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshalled in the order of their magnitude, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along. The tops of the marshalled row form a flowing curve of invariable proportions; and each element, as it is sorted into place, finds, as it were, a pre-ordained niche, accurately adapted to fit it."

"[W]e have to get rid of the common illusion that the axioms of moral conduct, which are or appear to be natural to ourselves, must be those of every other sane and reasonable human being. The very existence of the Anthropological Institute should be construed into a standing protest against such narrowness of view. The world of human mind and instinct is richly variegated, persons even of the same sex and race differing sometimes more widely than ordinary men differ from ordinary women, though of course in other ways, and this amount of difference is indeed large. Foreigners say that we are stiff, and that our naturally narrow powers of sympathy are still further contracted by insular prejudices. Be this as it may, it is certain that the English do not excel in winning the hearts of other nations. They have to broaden their sympathies by the study of mankind as they are, and without prejudice. This is precisely what the Anthropologists of all nations aim at doing, and in consequence they continually succeed in discovering previously unsuspected connections between the present and past forms of society, between the mind of the child and of the man, and between the customs, creeds, and institutions of barbarians and of civilised peoples. Anthropology teaches us to sympathise with other races, and to regard them as kinsmen rather than aliens. In this aspect it may be looked upon as a pursuit of no small political value."

"[T]though scientific travellers are comparatively few, yet out of their ranks a large proportion of the leaders in all branches of science has been supplied. It is one of the most grateful results of a journey to the young traveller to find himself admitted, on the ground of his having so much of special interest to relate, into the society of men with whose names he had long been familiar, and whom he had reverenced as his heroes."

"General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long standing they become fixed rules of life and assume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. Consequently those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain a hatred and horror of statistics. They cannot endure the idea of submitting sacred impressions to cold-blooded verification. But it is the triumph of scientific men to rise superior to such superstitions, to desire tests by which the value of beliefs may be ascertained, and to feel sufficiently masters of themselves to discard contemptuously whatever may be found untrue."

"What nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction."

"I do not plead guilty to a shallow view of human nature, when I propose to apply, as it were, a foot-rule to its heights and depths."

"In the earlier part of his memoir, Sir Bartle Frere had compared our mode of treating uncivilized races to that of the Romans. He heartily wished that the resemblance held in certain essential points. Our military hold was as firm, our tolerance of local customs was as great, our dealings were as just, and more just than theirs. But we did not amalgamate with them as the Romans did, we did not intermarry; by means of our missionaries we pressed upon them a form of religion which was not the most congenial. Our civilization was stiff. This, and much more, was pointed out in a very able and most pathetic memoir by Mr. Blyden, the present Minister of Liberia to England, who is a full-blooded negro. The article appeared in Frazer’s Magazine some years ago, and it showed the repressive effect of White civilization upon the Negroes, as contrasted with that of the Mohammedans. It was a shame to us as an Imperial nation, that representatives of the many people whom we governed, did not find themselves more at home among us. They seldom appeared in such meetings as the present one; they did not come to England. We did not see them in the streets. It was very different in ancient Rome, where the presence of foreigners from all parts of the then known world was a characteristic feature of every crowd. He did not now suggest any action, but merely wished to lay stress on this serious drawback to our national character as rulers of a great Empire. He thought they were greatly indebted to Sir Bartle Frere for introducing to public notice so important a subject as the best form of conduct of civilized races towards their less civilized neighbours, and he trusted that it would meet with that full and many-sided discussion which so important a question deserved."

"I have received in a letter from a friend residing in , , the following account of a remarkably interesting meteorological phenomenon, which is well worth putting on record:— “We had a curious sight from this house yesterday [July 26]. It was a dead calm, but in a field just below the garden, with only one hedge between us and it, the hay was whirled up high into the sky, a column connecting above and below, and in the course of the evening we found great patches of hay raining down all over the surrounding meadows and our garden. It kept falling quite four hours after the affair. There was not a breath of air stirring as far as we could see, except in that one spot.”"

"I said what I have to say about the modern use of the word "genius" in the preface to the second edition of my "Hereditary Genius." It has only latterly lost its old and usual meaning, which is preserved in the term of an "ingenious" artisan, and has come to be applied to something akin to inspiration. This simply means, as I suppose, though some may think differently, that the powers of unconscious work possessed by the brain are abnormally developed in them. The heredity of these powers has not, I believe, been as yet especially studied. It is strange that more attention has not been given until recently to unconscious brain work, because it is by far the most potent factor in mental operations. Few people, when in rapid conversation, have the slightest idea of the particular form which a sentence will assume into which they have hurriedly plunged, yet through the guidance of unconscious cerebration it develops itself grammatically and harmoniously. I write on good authority in asserting that the best speaking and writing is that which seems to flow automatically shaped out of a full mind."

"The demand for exceptional ability, when combined with energy and good character, is so great that a lad who is gifted with them is hardly more likely to remain over looked than a bird’s nest in the playground of a school."

"[T]hough anthropometry owes an immense debt to Quetelet, we must be careful not to follow his principles and methods blindfold. We must recollect that Quetelet lived in pre-Darwinian times, at a date when the fixity of races was an established scientific belief. His central principle consequently was that the mean man is the perfect man. The theory of evolution now assures us of what common sense never doubted---that this principle is radically wrong. The most desirable man is not the one who is mediocre in his wits, in his honesty, and in his aspirations; or, again, in the proportions of his figure, in his muscular power, and in his ability to endure fatigue. Anthropologists, as a rule, are behindhand in their studies of men of superior types, who rank above the mediocrity of their race in every respect, and are not to be confounded with those who rank above the majority in only a few conspicuous ways, through the sacrifice of other qualities which are no less essential, but of a less showy kind."

"The number of strokes of the paint brush that go to making a picture is of some scientific interest, so I venture to record two personal experiences. Some years ago I was painted by , a well known German artist, when, finding it very tedious to sit doing nothing, I amused myself by counting the number of strokes per minute that he bestowed on the portrait. He was methodical, and it was easy to calculate their average number, and as I knew only too well the hours, and therefore the number of minutes, I sat to him, the product of the two numbers gave what I wanted to learn. It was 20,000. A year and a half ago I was again painted by the late lamented artist , whose method was totally different from that of Graef. He looked hard at me, mixing his colours the while, then, dashing at the portrait, made his dabs so fast that I had to estimate rather than count them. Proceeding as before, the result, to my great surprise, was the same, 20,000. Large as this number is, it is less than the number of stitches in an ordinary pair of knitted socks. In mine there are 100 rows to each 7 inches of length, and 102 stitches in each row at the widest part. Two such cylinders, each 7 inches long, would require 20,000 stitches, so the socks, though they are only approximately cylinders, but much more than 7 inches long, would require more than that number."

"I have no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality. The experiences of the nursery, the school, the University, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary."

"The long period of the dark ages... is due... in a very considerable degree, to the celebacy enjoined by religious orders on their votaries. Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that fitted... deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature, or to art... they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. ...celibacy. ...thus, by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal... the Church brutalized the breed of our forefathers. ...as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be alone the parents of future generations. She practised the arts which breeders would use, who aimed at creating ferocious, currish, and stupid natures. ... The policy of the religious world in Europe... by means of persecutions... brought thousands of the foremost thinkers and men of political aptitudes to the scaffold, or imprisoned them during a large part of their manhood, or drove them as emigrants into other lands. ...Hence the Church, having first captured all the gentle natures and condemned them to celibacy, made another sweep of her huge nets ...to catch those who were the most fearless, truth-seeking, and intelligent ...and therefore the most suitable parents of a high civilization, and put a strong check, if not a direct stop, to their progeny. Those she reserved... to breed the generations of the future, were the servile, the indifferent, and again, the stupid. Thus, as she... brutalized human nature by her system of celibacy applied to the gentle, she demoralised it by her system of persecution of the intelligent, the sincere, and the free."

"There is a steady check in an old civilisation upon the fertility of the abler classes: the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fit for a high civilisation."

"The best form of civilization in respect to the improvement of the race, would be one in which society was not costly; where incomes were chiefly derived from professional sources, and not much through inheritance; where every lad had a chance of showing his abilities, and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first-class education and entrance into professional life, by the liberal help of the exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in his early youth; where marriage was held in as high honour as in ancient Jewish times; where the pride of race was encouraged (of course I do not refer to the nonsensical sentiment of the present day, that goes under that name); where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods, and lastly, where the better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed, and their descendants naturalized."

"A collection of living magnates in various branches of intellectual achievement is always a feast to my eyes; being, as they are, such massive, vigorous, capable-looking animals."

"I have already spoken in Hereditary Genius of the large effects of religious persecution in comparatively recent years, on the natural character of races, and shall not say more about it here; but it must not be omitted from the list of steady influences continuing through ancient historical times down, in some degree, to the present day, in destroying the self-reliant, and therefore the nobler races of men."

"A really intelligent nation might be held together by far stronger forces than are derived from the purely gregarious instincts. A nation need not be a mob of slaves, clinging to one another through fear, and for the most part incapable of self-government, and begging to be led; but it might consist of vigorous self-reliant men, knit to one another by innumerable ties, into a strong, tense, and elastic organisation."

"My friend Sir G. Johnson subsequently became the leader of one of the two opposed methods of dealing with cholera. His was the “ eliminative” view, namely, that there was mischief in the system that Nature strove to eliminate, so he prescribed castor oil to expedite matters; others took the exactly opposite view, consequently there was open war between the two methods. I read somewhere that one of Johnson’s most fiery opponents considered the number of deaths occasioned by his method to amount to eleven thousand. Leaving aside all question of the accuracy of the estimate of this particular treatment, it is easy to see that when a pestilence lies heavily on a nation, the numbers affected are so large that a proper or improper treatment may be capable of saving or of destroying many thousands of lives. By all means, then, let competitive methods be tested at hospitals on a sufficiently large scale to settle their relative merits. Of this I will speak further almost immediately."

"I wish that hospitals could be turned into places for experiment more than they are, in the following perfectly humane direction. Suppose two different and competing treatments of a particular malady ; I have just mentioned a case in point. Let the patients suffering under it be given the option of being placed under Dr. A. or Dr. B., the respective representatives of the two methods, and the results be statistically compared. A co-operation without partisanship between many large hospitals ought to speedily settle doubts that now hang unnecessarily long under dispute."

"All male animals, including men, when they are in love, are apt to behave in ways that seem ludicrous to bystanders."

"As these lines are being written, the circumstances under which I first clearly grasped the important generalisation that the laws of Heredity were solely concerned with deviations expressed in statistical units, are vividly recalled to my memory. It was in the grounds of Naworth Castle, where an invitation had been given to ramble freely. A temporary shower drove me to seek refuge in a reddish recess in the rock by the side of the pathway. There the idea flashed across me, and I forgot everything else for a moment in my great delight."

"The following question had been much in my mind. How is it possible for a population to remain alike in its features, as a whole, during many successive generations, if the average produce of each couple resemble their parents? Their children are not alike but vary..."

"After much consideration and many inquiries, I determined, in 1885, on experimenting with sweet peas, which were suggested to me both by Sir Joseph Hooker and by Mr. Darwin. ...The result clearly proved Regression; the mean Filial deviation was only one-third that of the parental one, and the experiments all concurred. The formula that expresses the descent from one generation of a people to the next, showed that the generations would be identical if this kind of Regression was allowed for."

"All the formulæ of Conic Sections having long since gone out of my head, I went on my return to London to the Royal Institution to read them up. Professor, now Sir James Dewar, came in and probably noticing signs of despair in my face, asked me what I was about; then said, "Why do you bother over this? My brother in law, J. Hamilton Dickson of Peterhouse, loves problems and wants new ones. Send it to him." I did so... and he most cordially helped me by working it out... on the basis of the... Gaussian Law of Error."

"Man is gifted with pity and other kindly feelings; he has also the power of preventing many kinds of suffering. I conceive it to fall well within his province to replace Natural Selection by other processes that are more merciful and not less effective.This is precisely the aim of Eugenics. Its first object is to check the birth-rate of the Unfit, instead of allowing them to come into being, though doomed in large numbers to perish prematurely. The second object is the improvement of the race by furthering the productivity of the Fit by early marriages and healthful rearing of their children. Natural Selection rests upon excessive production and wholesale destruction; Eugenics on bringing no more individuals into the world than can be properly cared for, and those only of the best stock."

"Mr. F. Galton would refer first to the purely ethnological part of the memoir, which dwelt upon the difficulty of defining the Bantu race. He thought that ethnologists were apt to look upon race as something more definite than it really was. He presumed it meant no more than the average of the characteristics of all the persons who were supposed to belong to the race, and this average was continually varying. The popular notion seemed based upon some idea like that of a common descent of the different races, from a parent Noachian stock, whence the aborigines of each county were derived, and where they lived in unchanged conditions till the white man came. Nothing can be further from the truth. We know how in South Africa the Bantu population has been in constant seethe and change; how, in much less than a single century, Chaka and his tribe, Mosilekatse and his tribe, and others, have in turn become prominent nations, and the average of the whole Bantu population must thereby have differed at different times. This same fluctuation of the average qualities of the population must, for anything we can see to the contrary, have gone on for many thousands of years. He therefore thought the phrase of Bantu race, as signifying some invariable and definite type, to be a mere chimera."

"I am disposed then, like a great many anthropologists, to believe more in nature than in nurture, more in heredity than in education. Once, at a soiree of the Royal Society, I spied, near together, two of my friends—Francis Galton, apostle of heredity, and Sir Joshua Fitch, prominent educationist. A wicked idea entered my head. I introduced the two, and stood by to watch the inevitable conflict. It was most instructive and diverting. The last thing I heard was Fitch saying in a plaintive tone, But if all you say is correct, what’s the use of me?"

"Speaking of rhetoric, there should be an editorial rule that sentences associated with sociobiology, with efforts to "justify slavery, imperialism, racism, genocide, and to oppose equal rights or ERA" [a quote from S.L. Washburn] should always appear next to sentences associating environmentalist/learning theory, with efforts to justify propaganda, psychological terror, false advertisement, public indoctrination of hatred of foreigners, class enemies, minority groups, and so on and so on. Juxtaposing sociobiology and learning theory in this manner ought to show how unproductive it is to claim through innuendo or otherwise that science will lead to pseudoscience, will lead to man's inhumanity to man: ergo no science. Actually, one could argue that since man is such a cultural/learning animal we should have greater fear of learning theory since learning has far more power over man's behavior than genes. More specifically, if humans were not such learning animals, they would not learn all that Galton trash: ergo stop learning research so that bad guys will not use the data to teach the trash more effectively."

"William R. Charlesworth, “Comments on S.L. Washburn's review of Kenneth Bock's Human Nature and History: A Response to Sociobiology” Human Ethology Newsletter (Volume 3, Issue 3, September 1981), p.22"

"I have often heard, or read, though I cannot now give good references, that when the practice of selling or buying slaves was practised by men of our race, with few qualms of conscience, the slaves were priced after a minute inspection. An experience of my own, of some forty-five years ago, while travelling in the Soudan, is to the point. An Egyptian, who possessed little besides a sword, had attached himself to the caravan with which I was travelling. He was on his way to join a slave-raiding expedition on the borders of Abyssinia, and he had, I found out, considerable experience in slave markets. I asked him many questions, from time to time, about the valuing of slaves, and, at last, begged him, as a favour, to price myself, just as if I was a light-coloured African; for I was curious to know my worth as an animal. He took evident pains, and I think was fairly honest, though with a bias towards flattery. Having regard to the then high state of the market, he estimated my worth on the spot, at a number of piastres that was about equal to 20 pounds."

"Galton [...] combined analysis and mathematical techniques to great effect, and in so doing, brought many new facts to light. [...] it is part of a grand tradition that, especially in the fields of sociology and psychology, has unleashed a great many intriguing and clever experiments."

"Galton's passion shows itself best, I feel, in two essays that may seem more frivolous to us than they did to him. In the first, he computed the additional years of life enjoyed by the Royal Family and the clergy because of the prayers offered up for them by the greater part of the population; the result was a negative number. In the second, to relieve the tedium of sitting for a portrait painter, on two different occasions he computed the number of brush strokes and found about 20,000 to the portrait; just the same number, he calculated, as the hand movements that went into the knitting of a pair of socks."

"Francis Galton discovered the concept of correlation in the late fall of 1888. [...] To Galton, correlation meant what we might call today intraclass correlation—two variables are correlated because they share a common set of influences. [...] Galton seems to have only conceived of correlation as a positive relationship; negative correlations play no role in his discussions."

"It took Francis Galton several years to figure out that correlation and regression are not two concepts – they are different perspectives on the same concept. The general rule is straightforward but has surprising consequences: whenever the correlation between two scores is imperfect, there will be regression to the mean."

"I want to tell you about a boat." That was the challenge that Francis Galton used to find out about the strength of mental imagery. He found that no one person would immediately make the image specific far beyond the sharpness of this general word; another person would suppress the imagery altogether, as those who deal in abstractions do, starving their visual faculties. But if the faculty is free in its actions, Galton said, it can select the images it needs, shift them in any way it wishes, and use and take pleasure in its actions. Galton went on, of course, to particularize the boat; and he made the necessary further declaration that the visual power was to be "subordinated to the higher intellectual operations."

"The word eugenics (which means "the good birth") was coined in 1887 by the younger half cousin of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton. A former child prodigy with a striking gift for data mining, he popularized the notion of regression toward the mean in statistical research, launched the science of forensics by discovering that each person possesses a unique set of fingerprints, and created the first weather maps. As Edwin Black described Galton in his history of eugenics in America, War Against the Weak: "He joyously applied his arithmetical prowess and razor-like powers of observation to everyday life, seeking correlation. Galton distinguished himself by his ability to recognize patterns, making him an almost unique connoisseur of nature-sampling, tasting, and discerning new character in seemingly random flavors of chaos.""

"Some writers have doubted whether those complex mental attributes, on which genius and talent depend, are inherited, even when both parents are thus endowed. But he who will study Mr. Galton's able work on 'Hereditary Genius' will have his doubts allayed."

"As part of the National Strategy, the Government should commit itself to the virtual elimination of functional illiteracy and innumeracy."

"Education costs money, but then so does ignorance."

"There may be occasions when it is best to behave irrationally, but whether there are should be decided rationally."

"Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion", and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. It is curious that this point is made so seldom outside of science fiction. It is sometimes worthwhile to take science fiction seriously."

"The minimum I. Q. necessary for one to grasp the concepts of Statistics required for the undergraduate degree is 120.(paraphrased)"

"Broadly speaking, the object of industry is to set up economic ways and means of satisfying human wants and in so doing to reduce everything possible to routines requiring a minimum amount of human effort."

"Progress in modifying our concept of control has been and will be comparatively slow. In the first place, it requires the application of certain modern physical concepts; and in the second place it requires the application of statistical methods which up to the present time have been for the most part left undisturbed in the journal in which they appeared."

"Postulate 1. All chance systems of causes are not alike in the sense that they enable us to predict the future in terms of the past."

"In other words, the fact that the criterion we happen to use has a fine ancestry of highbrow statistical theorems does not justify its use. Such justification must come from empirical evidence that it works."

"Based upon evidence such as already presented, it appears feasible to set up criteria by which to determine when assignable causes of variation in quality have been eliminated so that the product may then be considered to be controlled within limits. This state of control appears to be, in general, a kind of limit to which we may expect to go economically in finding and removing causes of variability without changing a major portion of the manufacturing process as, for example, would be involved in the substitution of new materials or designs."

"The definition of random in terms of a physical operation is notoriously without effect on the mathematical operations of statistical theory because so far as these mathematical operations are concerned random is purely and simply an undefined term. The formal and abstract mathematical theory has an independent and sometimes lonely existence of its own. But when an undefined mathematical term such as random is given a definite operational meaning in physical terms, it takes on empirical and practical significance. Every mathematical theorem involving this mathematically undefined concept can then be given the following predictive form: If you do so and so, then such and such will happen."

"Rule 1. Original data should be presented in a way that will preserve the evidence in the original data for all the predictions assumed to be useful."

"Rule 2. Any summary of a distribution of numbers in terms of symmetric functions should not give an objective degree of belief in any one of the inferences or predictions to be made therefrom that would cause human action significantly different from what this action would be if the original distributions had been taken as evidence."

"Every sentence in order to have definite scientific meaning must be practically or at least theoretically verifiable as either true or false upon the basis of experimental measurements either practically or theoretically obtainable by carrying out a definite and previously specified operation in the future. The meaning of such a sentence is the method of its verification."

"Both pure and applied science have gradually pushed further and further the requirements for accuracy and precision. However, applied science, particularly in the mass production of interchangeable parts, is even more exacting than pure science in certain matters of accuracy and precision."

"There are some things that you know to be true, and others that you know to be false; yet, despite this extensive knowledge that you have, there remain many things whose truth or falsity is not known to you. We say that you are uncertain about them. You are uncertain, to varying degrees, about everything in the future; much of the past is hidden from you; and there is a lot of the present about which you do not have full information. Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it."

"Generally there is Stigler’s law of eponymy that says that a scientific notion is never attributed to the right person; in particular, the law is not due to Stigler."

"Uncertainty is a personal matter; it is not the uncertainty but your uncertainty."

"It is not surprising that in talking about uncertainty we should lean heavily on facts, just as the court of law does when interrogating witnesses. Facts form a sort of bedrock on which we can build the shifting sands of uncertainty."

"Utility is the emotion pleading to be let into the house of pure reason and thereby enriching it."

"There is much evidence that people are not rational, in the economist’s sense; nor do they take into account expectation, in the precise interpretation of that word. As a result economic theory often does not correspond with what happens in the market. Some would argue that we need descriptive economics. I would argue that all should be taught about probability, utility, and MEU (maximization of expected utility) and act accordingly."

"In my opinion, it helps enormously to know why something is true, rather than being told it is true, for why should you believe me? Never believe anything on the authority of a single person but seek confirmation — and reason is the best confirmation."

"It is dangerous to attach probability zero to anything other than a logical impossibility."

"The grand assertion is that you must see the world through probability and that probability is the only guide you need."

"Whatever way uncertainty is approached, probability is the only sound way to think about it."

"It is not merely a question of calculating with probabilities but also one of relating the ingredients of your probability statements to reality. You do not need to think only about p(E|K) but also about the precise nature of E and K."

"In teaching there can be too much emphasis on certainty and a proper appreciation of uncertainty is to be encouraged."

"Consider the case of a person who holds a view with probability 1. Then coherence says that it is no use having a debate with them because nothing will change their mind."

"Almost all thinking people agree that you should not have probability 1 (or 0) for any event, other than one demonstrable by logic, like 2 x 2 = 4."

"Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise."

"The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data."

"The tool that is so dull that you cannot cut yourself on it is not likely to be sharp enough to be either useful or helpful."

"In real life, as well as in experiments, people can come to believe things that never really happened."

"The results were clear: the new environment inhibited recognition."

"To be cautious, one should not take high confidence as any absolute guarantee of anything."

"The problem is clear: the unreliability of eyewitness identification evidence poses one of the most serious problems in the administration of criminal justice and civil litigation."

"Even if it's going to be a harmful memory, they don't want to let it go. (This is) why sometimes I get such resistance to the work I do. Because it's telling people that your mind might be full of much more fiction than you realize. And people don't like that."

"Which would you rather have? A kid with obesity, heart problems, shortened lifespan, diabetes -- or maybe a little bit of false memory?"

"Memory works like a Wikipedia page: You can go in there and change it, but so can other people."

"It is possible not to think about something for a long time, even something unpleasant that happened to you. But what's been claimed in these repressed-memory cases is something, by definition, that's too extreme to be explained by ordinary forgetting and remembering. They're saying that in order to go on in life, you had to wall off this memory, because it would be too painful to live with. Then finally you go into therapy and crack through the repression barrier and out comes this pristine memory. But there really is no credible scientific support for that notion."

"Therapists probably can't ethically do it, and they may have anti-deception provisions in their standards of conduct. But bad governments, bad people, they don't have requirements of conduct. When we recently published a study about planting false memories among U.S. soldiers, I was worried we were putting out a recipe for how you can do horrible things to somebody and then wipe their memory away."

"I collaborated on a brain imaging study in 2010, and the overwhelming conclusion we reached is that the neural patterns were very similar for true and false memories. We are a long way away from being able to look at somebody's brain activity and reliably classify an authentic memory versus one that arose through some other process."

"All scientific work is incomplete – whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time."

"In principle, the only operations which a machine cannot perform for us are those which we cannot describe in detail, or which could not be completed in a finite number of steps."

"Common language — or, at least, the English language — has an almost universal tendency to disguise epistemological statements by putting them into a grammatical form which suggests to the unwary an ontological statement. A major source of error in current probability theory arises from an unthinking failure to perceive this. To interpret the first kind of statement in the ontological sense is to assert that one’s own private thoughts and sensations are realities existing externally in Nature. We call this the ‘mind projection fallacy’, and note the trouble it causes many times in what follows. But this trouble is hardly confined to probability theory; as soon as it is pointed out, it becomes evident that much of the discourse of philosophers and Gestalt psychologists, and the attempts of physicists to explain quantum theory, are reduced to nonsense by the author falling repeatedly into the mind projection fallacy."

"The semiliterate on the next bar stool will tell you with absolute, arrogant assurance just how to solve the world's problems; while the scholar who has spent a lifetime studying their causes is not at all sure how to do this."

"It appears to be a quite general principle that, whenever there is a randomized way of doing something, then there is a nonrandomized way that delivers better performance but requires more thought."

"Ideas are incestuous."

"Game theory, however, deals only with the way in which ultrasmart, all knowing people should behave in competitive situations, and has little to say to Mr. X as he confronts the morass of his problem."

"There is no shortage of disputes."

"The party that negotiates in haste is often at a disadvantage."

"A mediator is an impartial outsider who tries to aid the negotiators in their quest to find a compromise agreement."

"The best practical advice then is: try to maximize your expected payoff, which is the sum of all payoffs multiplied by probabilities."

"Advice: don't embarrass your bargaining partner by forcing him or her to make all the concessions."

"Each party tended to view its own chances in court as better than the other side viewed them."

"After a little reflection, the best strategy becomes clear: bid aggressively up to a maximum cutoff value and then quit."

"It is always amazing to see how wide a spectrum of results can be obtained from replicating an identical negotiation with different principal actors; it makes no difference whether there subjects are inexperienced or whether they are senior executives and young presidents of business firms. That is an important lesson to be learned here."

"It's easy, of course, for two teams to collude, but somewhat more difficult for twenty-eight-"

"Final-offer arbitration should have great appeal for the daring (the risk seekers) who play against the timid (the risk avoiders)."

"A final word of advice: don't gloat about how well you have done."

"The art of compromise centers on the willingness to give up something in order to get something else in return. Successful artists get more than they give up."

"Most people, even in simple risky situations, don't behave the way the theory of utility would have them behave."

"the mediation of internal conflicts can be resolved by linkages with other problems."

"A lot depends on the starting point."

"We act like a zero-sum society, when in reality there is a lot of non zero-sum fat to be skimmed off to everyone's mutual advantage."

"It's worth repeating here, though, because we are talking about mechanisms for resolving conflict and many people don't realize it's impossible to devise a foolproof scheme."

"Disputants often fare poorly when they each act greedily and deceptively."

"The need is not for the creation of new analytical techniques specially designed for the negotiation process, but rather for the creative use of analytical thinking that exploits existing techniques."

"The stories I have to tell are not for the ears of youngsters. What were the stories, really? A crowd of men charged from the trench. Later, some of them came back. What more was there to say? Once, a long time ago, war had been glamorous, with pageantry and uniforms to shame a peacock. Now it was only necessary, and the uniforms were the color of mud."

"Brilliance cannot improvise on faulty data."

"Cigars were for talk; pipes for reflection."

"But scouts, he told himself firmly, must observe what is, not what they wish to see."

"What the prisoner said made some sense. He could see how technological progress—and social change with it—was coupled with free trade and the free exchange of ideas. Yet, he wasn’t at all sure that it was necessarily a good thing. There was a lot to be said for stability and continuity."

"He believed because he wanted to believe. And that, too, is madness."

"This was an omen for sure, but one with no obvious meaning."

"If people don’t leave a hole in your life when they are gone, Consuela, they were never in your life at all."

"No field of knowledge is so transparently simple as another’s."

"You have a grim taste in miracles, my friend."

"The nag is as fat as a monk—and will stop to eat at every chance, so the resemblance is no happenstance."

"Philosophers will always have logical reasons for avoiding the good—and those reasons will always hang on their lust for material goods. A man who has little thinks little of sharing it; but the man who has much will clutch it with his dying fingers."

"The philosophy of the likelihood of events concludes that folk from different worlds must have different forms."

"As often happens, fear showed itself in hostility."

"He dyed his hair with great art, maintaining enough gray to suggest wisdom, but not so much as to suggest age."

"Much as I would tend my manor in peace, peace needs the consent of all, while one alone may raise a war. I swore an oath to protect the defenseless and punish peace-breakers, and that includes peace-breaking Herrenfolk. Your priests say to forgive your enemy, and that is well, or revenge follows revenge until eternity. But between a man who will stop at nothing and one who will hesitate at anything, the advantage is generally to the former. The pagans had right, too. It is a false peace to be overforgiving. Your enemy may read forbearance as weakness and so be drawn to strike."

"He read the document a second time, but the words had not changed."

"There seemed no face within the cowl, only a black emptiness, and the notion sprang irresistibly to Dietrich’s mind that this was Death, now these dozen years overdue, treading a weary mountain trail in search of him. Then a flash of white showed within the shadow and Dietrich realized that it was only the angle of the sun that had made that hood seem so empty."

"One does not debate nature; one experiences nature."

"“Had you learned to flatter the Kaiser, you would need not live in the back woods.” “Had you learned to live in the back woods, you would need not flatter the Kaiser.”"

"He could not live again in Paris. It had seemed better then only because he had been younger, and had not yet known contentment."

"“I know my equations are true,” she mused aloud. “I need to know if they are fact.”"

"She said nothing, but said it loudly."

"“Men afraid may see demons in the familiar, and direct their fear of the insensible to a fear of the sensible.” “Thought-lacking!” “So it is; but it is what folk do.”"

"“You split hairs.” “Better to split hairs than the heads beneath them.”"

"Sometimes the obvious is only wishful thinking."

"Without the aid of statistics nothing like real medicine is possible."

"Between the one who counts the facts, grouped according to their resemblance, in order to know what to believe regarding the value of therapeutic agents and him who does not count but always says "more or less frequent," there is the difference between truth and error, between something that is clear and truly scientific and something that is vague and without value—for what place is there in Science for that which is vague?"

"All [knowledge] comes from experience, it is true, but experience is nothing if it does not form collections of similar facts. Now, to make collections is to count."

"From the exposition of facts... we infer that bloodletting has had very little influence on the progress of pneumonitis, of erysipelas of the face, and of angina tonsillaris, in the cases under my observation; that its influence has not been more evident in the cases bled copiously and repeatedly, than in those bled only once and to a small amount; that, we do not at once arrest inflammations, as is too often fondly imagined; that, in cases where appears to be otherwise, it is undoubtedly owing, either to an error in diagnosis, or to the fact that the bloodletting was practised at an advanced period of the disease, when it had nearly run its course; that, it would be well, nevertheless, in inflammations of imminent hazard, pneumonitis, for instance, to try whether a first bleeding sufficient to produce syncope, from twenty-five to thirty ounces or more, would not be attended with greater success; and finally that, wherever I have been able to compare the effect of general, with that of local bleeding by leeches, the superiority of the former has appeared to me demonstrated."

"In any epidemic... let us suppose five hundred of the sick, taken indiscriminately, to be subjected to one kind of treatment, and five hundred others, taken in the same manner, to be treated in a different mode; if the mortality is greater among the first, than among the second, must we not conclude that the treatment was less appropriate, or less efficacious in the first class, than in the second ? It is unavoidable; for among so large a collection, similarities of condition will necessarily be met with, and all things being equal, except the treatment, the conclusion will be rigorous."

"The objection made to the numerical method, to wit, the difficulty or impossibility of forming classes of similar facts, is alike applicable to all the methods that might be substituted; that it is impossible to appreciate each case with mathematical exactness, and it is precisely on this account that enumeration becomes necessary; by so doing, the errors, (which are inevitable,) being the same in two groups of patients subjected to different treatment, mutually compensate each other, and they may be disregarded without sensibly affecting the exactness of the results."

"Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis should be honored as a primary author of the "numerical method." By "numerical method" he meant that the stages of disease and therapeutic outcomes should be expressed in terms of numbers and not merely as a set of verbal descriptions. ...This method seems so sensible that it is difficult to see why it was resisted by the medical establishment."

"By the middle of the 1830s the numerical method, which Louis enshrined as the doctrinal heart of his new Société médicale d'observation, had become probably the most fiercely contested proposition in all of French medicine."

"[John P.] Bull... wrote his history of the clinical trial in 1951. He argued that the conduct of "clinical trials" can be traced to the ancient Egyptians. ...Highlighting historic events—such as Avicenna's rules for testing drugs, Francis Bacon's suggestion of a committee of physicians to judge therapeutic efficacy, James Lind's comparative trial of scurvy "cures", and P.C.A. Louis's application of his numerical method in the clinic—Bull presents a linear account of the development of the clinical trial. The implication... is that, cumulatively, these historic experiments made the clinical trial progressively more scientific."

"P. Ch. A. Louis, physician of the Hospital de la Pitié, is a man, whose labors and whose writings must become more and more known for ages. I should deem it service enough to my brethren in this country, if I could induce them, one and all, to read and study the works of this great pathologist. M. Louis is the founder of the numerical system, as it has been denominated, in respect to the science of medicine. ...M. Louis has not brought forward a new system of medicine; he has only proposed and pursued a new method in prosecuting the study of medicine. This is nothing else than the method of induction, the method of Bacon, so much vaunted and yet so little regarded. ...To estimate the value of his observations, it is necessary to understand the plan, on which he collected them. First, then, he ascertained when the patient under his examination began to be diseased. Not satisfied with vague answers, he went back to the period, when the patient enjoyed his usual health; and he also endeavored to learn whether that usual health had been firm, or in any respect infirm. He noted also the age, occupation, residence, and manner of living of the patient; likewise any accidents which had occurred, and which might have influenced the disease then affecting him. He ascertained also, as much as possible, the diseases which had occurred in the family of his patient. Secondly, he inquired into the present disease, ascertaining not only what symptoms had marked its commencement, but those which had been subsequently developed and the order of their occurrence; and recording those, which might not seem to be connected with the principal disease, as well as those which were so connected; also, measuring the degree or violence of each symptom, with as much accuracy as the case would admit. Thirdly, he noted the actual phenomena present at his examination, depending for this not only on the statement of the patient, but on his own senses, his eyes, his ears and his hands. Under this and the preceding head he was not satisfied with noting the functions, in which the patient complained of disorder, but examined carefully as to all the functions, recording their state as being healthy or otherwise, and even noticing the absence of symptoms, which might bear on the diagnosis. Thus all secondary diseases, and those, which accidentally co-existed with the principal malady, were brought under his view. Fourthly, he continued to watch his patient from day to day, carefully recording all the changes, which occurred in him till his restoration to health, or his decease. Fifthly, in the fatal cases he exercised the same scrupulous care in examining the dead, as he had in regard to the living subject. Prepared by a minute acquaintance with anatomy, and familiar with the changes wrought by disease, he looked not only at the parts where the principal disorder was manifested, but at all the organs. His notes did not state opinions, but facts. He recorded in regard to each part, which was not quite healthy in its appearance, the changes in color, consistence, firmness, thickness, &c.; not contenting himself with saying that a part was inflamed, or was cancerous, or with the use of any general, but indefinite terms."

"He studies nature with a full faith in the uniformity of her laws, and in the certainty that truth may be ascertained by diligent labor. It is truth only he loves; not anxious to build up a system, nor pretending to explain every thing, he says to his pupils, such and such have been my observations; you can observe as well as I, if you will study the art of observation, and if you will come to it with an honest mind, and be faithful in noting all which you discover, and not merely the things which are interesting at the moment, or those which support a favorite dogma; I state to you the laws of nature as they appear to me; if true, your observations will confirm them; if not true, they will refute them; I shall be content if only the truth be ascertained."

"My sole expectation is to lead some, who might otherwise be ignorant of them, among my brethren of the present day, to study works which I esteem as among the most valuable certainly, if not the most valuable, which any age has furnished us in regard to medicine. ...these principles may be added to, they may be enlarged, limited and modified, and yet the system may be maintained; and it will still derive its support from the first labors devoted to its erection as much as from the last."

"Italy is, after France and perhaps in the same degree, the land in which love of country has the deepest roots in the hearts of its inhabitants. The fact is that perhaps nowhere else has nature been so prodigal with its enchantments and seductions. Therefore, although Italy has been, since the fall of the Caesars, the object of European covetousness, the eternal battlefield of powerful neighbors, and the theatre of the fiercest and most prolonged civil wars, her children have always refused to leave her. Save for some commercial colonies hastily thrown upon the shores of Asia by Genoa and Venice, history has not, in fact, recorded in Italy any important outward movement of population."

"Men in general are very slow to enter into what is reckoned a new thing; and there seems to be a very universal as well as great reluctance to undergo the drudgery of acquiring information that seems not to be absolutely necessary."

"Such is the disposition of men, that we value what is speculative and precarious, more than what is safe and beneficial."

"The nature of this trade, certainly not the most honourable in the world, affords room for much investigation and remark in a moral or humane point of view: in a political or commercial light it is perhaps less conspicuously an object of attention. It consists chiefly of commodities that are considered as holding a first rate place in the animal and the mineral world, for which in return the Africans receive the most rascally articles that the ingenuity of Europeans has found means to produce. In return to our fellow creatures, for gold, and for ivory, we exchange the basest of those articles that are suited to the taste or the fancy of a despicable set of barbarians. Whether the spirituous liquirs or the fire-arms that are sent there are most calculated for the destruction of the purchasers, might become a question not very easy to determine. The noxious quality of the one is at least equalled by the danger of attending the use of the other. There does not seem to be that regard to honour in this trade, which ought to make part of the nice character of the English merchant, unimpeachable, unimpeached, upon the 'Change of London or of Amsterdam. It seems as if we kept our honour for ourselves, and that with those barbarians (who are more our inferiors in address and cunning, than perhaps in any thing else) no honour, humanity, or equity, were at all necessary."

"All those things that make a nation richer, stronger, or more happy; or that tend to exalt national character, but that will not pay individuals, deserve public encouragement."

"It has seemed to me that the theory (calcul) of probabilities ought to serve as the basis for the study of all the sciences, and particularly of the sciences of observation."

"The great body of population dynamics, like those of the motion of the celestial bodies, can be solved—and what is most remarkable, there is a surprising analogy between the formulas employed in these calculations. I believe that I have achieved to some extent what I have long said about the possibility of founding a social mechanics on the model established by celestial mechanics—to formulate the motions of the social body in accordance with those of celestial bodies, and to find there again the same properties and laws of conservation."

"This great body (the social body) subsists by virtue of conservative principles, as does everything which has proceeded from the hands of the Almighty... When we think we have reached the highest point of the scale we find laws as fixed as those which govern the heavenly bodies: we turn to the phenomena of physics, where the free will of man is entirely effaced, so that the work of the Creator may predominate without hindrance. The collection of these laws, which exist independently of time and of the caprices of man, form a separate science, which I have considered myself entitled to name social physics."

"Little by little his conversation, always instructive and animated, gave a special direction to my tastes, which would have led me by preference towards letters. I resolved to complete my scientific studies and followed the courses in advanced mathematics given by M. [Jean Guillaume] Gamier. It was at the same time agreed by us that, in order to relieve him in his work, I should give some of the other courses with which he was charged. I thus found myself his pupil and his colleague."

"The more advanced the sciences have become, the more they have tended to enter the domain of mathematics, which is a sort of center towards which they converge. We can judge of the perfection to which a science has come by the facility, more or less great, with which it may be approached by calculation."

"We then better understand the weakness of man, and the power of the Supreme: we are struck with the inflexible constancy of the laws which regulate the march of worlds, and which preside over the succession of human generations."

"The Supreme has then not only spread life and movement throughout, and willed that its impress should be preserved, but has done more; for he has permitted man to associate in some degree with his work, and to modify it."

"The principal artists of the era of the revival of letters, such as Leon Baptista Alberti, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Durer, with many others who what art ought to borrow from science, felt the necessity of resorting to observation, in order to rebuild in some sort the ruined monument of ancient artistical skill. They studied nature in a philosophical manner; sought to strike out the limits within which they ought to confine themselves in order to be truthlike... and from those profound studies which kept them ever before the face of nature, they deduced original views and new models, destined to distinguish for ever that celebrated age. The proportions of the human body did not alone attract their attention: anatomy, perspective, and chemistry, formed parts of their studies; nothing was neglected; and some of these great artists even gained for themselves a first place among the geometers of their day. Their successors have not devoted themselves to such serious studies, and hence it so frequently happens that they are reduced to content themselves, either with copying from those who went before them, or with working after individual models, whose proportions they modify according to mere caprice, without having any just or proper ideas of the beautiful."

"It would be an error... to suppose that science makes the artist; yet it lends to him the most powerful assistance. In general, it is difficult to keep it within due limits; and I shall even freely admit that Albert Durer, in his work upon the proportions of the human frame, has imparted to it a certain scientific dryness, which lessens its utility. One finds there more of the geometer than the artist, and the geometer, moreover, such as he was at a time when it had not yet been discovered how much the rules of style enhance the value of scientific works, and, above all, of those which appertain at the same time to the domain of the fine arts."

"Artists have, for the most part, bound themselves down to follow a blind routine. Noble exceptions, however, have presented themselves. Nicholas Poussin, one of the most profound thinkers, whom the arts have produced, took care to correct and regulate by the antique the proportions which Leon Baptista Alberti and Albert Durer had given from the living model."

"My aim has been, not only to go once more through the task of Albert Durer, but to execute it also on an extended scale."

"I have sought to determine... the different relations of bulk, subsisting between the various parts of his frame; and to ascertain how far these relations become modified during his development, what they are in the flower of his age, and in what position they remain up to the instant of decay."

"It is only by long and laborious study, and by the comparison of a number of individuals, that it will be possible to succeed in establishing correct average proportions each age, and in settling the limits betwixt they can be made to vary, without ceasing to be accurate and faithful to nature—our first and guide in this difficult study."

"I have been surprised to find how little variety of opinion exists, in different places, regarding what they concurred in terming the beautiful."

"I am less desirous to explain phenomena than to establish their existence."

"I have always comprehended with difficulty... how persons pre-occupied doubtless by ideas, have seen any tendency to materialism in exposition of a series of facts deduced from documents. In giving to my work the title of Physics, I have had no other aim than to collect, in uniform order, the phenomena affecting man, nearly as physical science brings together the phenomena appertaining to the material world. If certain facts present themselves with an alarming regularity, to whom is blame to be ascribed? Ought charges of materialism to be brought against him who points out that regularity?"

"Judgments upon books are formed with even more haste and levity than judgments upon men. Writings are talked of without being known; and people take up an opinion for or against, in consequence of decisions which it would cost them some trouble to determine the source. These are evils which must be borne with patience, and the more so because they are common."

""There are few works on political economy," said Malthus to me, "which have been more spoken and less read than mine." All the absurdities which have been spoken and written respecting the illustrious English author, are well known. Certainly, by an appeal against such decisions, he would have all to gain, and nothing to lose, before a less prejudiced tribunal."

"From the examination of numbers, I believed myself justified in inferring, as a natural consequence, that, in given circumstances, and the influence of the same causes, we may reckon upon witnessing the repetition of the same effects, reproduction of the same crimes, and the same convictions. What has resulted from this exposition? Timorous persons have raised the cry of fatalism. If, however, some one said, "Man is born free; nothing force his free-will; he underlies the influence of external causes; cease to assimilate him to a machine, or to pretend to modify his actions. Therefore, ye legislators, repeal your laws; overturn your prisons; break your chains in pieces; your convictions penalties are of no avail; they are so many acts barbarous revenge. Ye philosophers and priests, speak no more of ameliorations, social or religious; you are materialists, because you assume to society like a piece of gross clay; you are fatalists, because you believe yourselves predestined to influence man in the exercise of his free-will, and to the course of his actions." If, I say, any one held such language to us, we should be disgusted with its excessive folly. And wherefore? Because we are thoroughly convinced that laws, education, and religion exercise a salutary influence on society, and that moral causes have their certain effects."

"We both call in experience to the support of our opinions; but, in your case, the experience is based on vague uncertainties, whilst I, more circumspect, strive never to lose sight of those scientific principles which ought to guide the observer in all his investigations. My aim is not to defend systems, or bolster up theories; I confine myself to the citation of facts, such as society presents to our view. If these facts be legitimately established, it follows that we must accept of and accommodate our reason to them."

"As laws and the principles of religion and morality are influencing causes, I have then not only the hope, but, what you have not, the positive conviction, that society may be ameliorated and reformed."

"Expect not... that efforts for the moral regeneration of man can be immediately crowned with success; operations upon masses are ever slow in progress, and their effects distant."

"What becomes of human free will and agency? ...it seems to me to involve one of the most admirable laws of conservation in nature—a law which presents a new proof of the wisdom of the Creator... It is necessary, then, to admit that free-will exercises itself within indefinite limits, if one wishes not to incur the reproach of denying it altogether. But, with all the follies which have passed through the head of man, with all the perverse inclinations which have desolated society, what would have become of our race during so many past ages? All these scourges have passed by, and neither man nor his faculties have undergone sensible alterations, as far at least as our observations can determine. This is because the same finger which has fixed limits to the sea, has set similar bounds to the passions of men—because the same voice has said to both, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther!""

"What! when it is necessary to take the most simple resolve, we are under the domination of our habitudes, our wants, our social relations, and a host of causes which, all of them, draw us about in a hundred different ways. These influences are so powerful, that we have no difficulty in telling, even when referring to persons whom we are scarcely acquainted with, or even know not at all, what is the resolution to which they will lead such parties. Whence, then, this certainty of foresight, exemplified by you daily, if you were not convinced, at the outset, that it is extremely probable the empire of causes will carry it over free-will. In considering the moral world a priori, you give to this free-will the most entire latitude; and when you come to practice, when you speak of what passes around you, you constantly fall into contradiction with yourselves."

"But is the anatomy of man not a more painful science still?—that science which leads us to dip our hands into the blood of our fellow-beings to pry with impassible curiosity into parts and organs which once palpitated with life? And yet who dreams this day of raising his voice against the study? Who does not applaud, on the contrary, the numerous advantages which it has conferred on humanity? The time is come for studying the moral anatomy of man also, and for uncovering its most afflicting aspects, with the view of providing remedies."

"The analysis of the moral man through his actions, and of the intellectual man through his productions, seems to me calculated to form one of the most interesting parts of the sciences of observation, applied to anthropology."

"It may be seen, in my work, that the course which I have adopted is that followed by the natural philosopher, in order to grasp the laws that regulate the material world. By the seizure of facts, I seek to rise to an appreciation of the causes whence they spring."

"The tables of criminality for different ages, given in my published treatise, merit at least as much faith as the tables of mortality, and verify themselves within perhaps even narrower limits; so that crime pursues its path with even more constancy than death. ...it is still betwixt the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five, that, all things being equal, the greatest number of persons are to be found in that position [of a criminal]."

"In every instance, it is not my method that is defective; proper observations alone fail me. But will it be ever impossible to have them perfectly precise? I believe that even at present we have them sufficiently so to enter, at least, on the great problem under consideration. Name them as you will, the actions which society stamps as crimes, and of which it punishes the authors, are reproduced every year, in almost exactly the same numbers; examined more closely, they are found to divide themselves into almost exactly the same categories; and, if their number were sufficiently large, we might carry farther our distinctions and subdivisions, and should always find there the same regularity. It will then remain correct to say, that a given species of actions is more common at one given age than at any other given age."

"The words cited from my work, when viewed isolatedly, are far from expressing the idea which I wished to attach to them. The works of genius upon which our judgments bear are in general complex; for there is no work, constructed by genius, which does not suppose the exercise of various of its faculties. A skilful analysis could alone make out the part of each of them..."

"I would suggest... the idea of a work which should have for its object the analytic examination of the development of our intellectual faculties for each age. Now, I have aimed to present, in the work here reproduced, only an essay, only a particular example, of such an analysis, "which tends to show that the maximum of energy of the passions occurs about the age of twenty-five." The minimum is not then determined; and even when it shall be, by a sufficient number of observations, one will no more be able to apply it to any given individual in particular, than one could make use of a table of mortality to determine the period of his decease."

"Social physics never can pretend to discover laws which will verify themselves in every particular, in the case of isolated individuals. The science will have rendered a service sufficiently vast, in giving more precise views upon a host of points, of which vague glimpses only were before possessed."

"We aim at a target—an end—marked by a point. The arrows go to right and left, high or low, according to the address of the shooters. In the mean time, after a considerable number of trials, the butt, which has not yet been touched, perhaps, a single time, becomes so well pointed out by the marks around it, that they would aid at once in rediscovering it, if it should chance to be lost sight of. Nay, more than this; even aims the most unfortunate may be made to conduce to this end; commencing with those marks which are farthest away, if they be sufficiently numerous, one may learn from them the real position of the point they surround."

"Limits... seem to me of two kinds, ordinary or natural, and extraordinary or beyond the natural. The first limits comprise within them the qualities which deviate more or less from the mean, without attracting attention by excess on one side or the other. When the deviations become greater, they constitute the extraordinary class, having itself its limits, on the outer verge of which are things preternatural... We must conceive the same distinctions in the moral world."

"Hitherto, the science of Man has been limited to researches... respecting some of its laws, to results deduced from single or insulated observations, and to theories often based on mere glimpses; and these constitute pretty nearly all the materials it possesses."

"The progressive development of moral and intellectual man has scarcely occupied their [scientists] attention; nor have they noted how the faculties of his mind are at every age influenced by those of the body, nor how his faculties mutually react."

"Having for their object the Science of Man, present difficulties exceedingly great, and, to merit confidence, must be collected upon a scale far too extended to be attempted by an individual philosopher."

"It is of primary importance to keep out of view man as he exists in an insulated, separate, or in an individual state, and to regard him only as a fraction of the species. In thus setting aside his individual nature, we get quit of all which is accidental, and the individual peculiarities, which exercise scarcely any influence over the mass, become effaced of their own accord, allowing the observer to seize the general results."

"A person examining too nearly a small portion of a very large circle... would see in this detached portion merely a certain quantity of physical points, grouped in a more or less irregular manner, and so, indeed, as to seem as if they had been arranged by chance... But, placing himself at a greater distance, the eye embraces of necessity a greater number of points, and already a degree of regularity is observable... and by removing still farther from the object, the observer loses sight of the individual points, no longer observes any accidental or odd arrangements amongst them, but discovers at once the law presiding over their general arrangements, and the precise nature of the circle so traced."

"To him... who had examined the laws of light merely in a drop of water, the brilliant phenomenon of the rainbow would be totally unintelligible."

"Even in respect to those crimes which seem perfectly beyond human foresight, such as murders committed in general at the close of quarrels, arising without a motive, and under other circumstances to all appearance the most fortuitous or accidental; nevertheless, experience proves that murders are committed annually, not only pretty nearly to the same extent, but even that the instruments employed are in the same proportions. Now, if this occurs in the case of crimes whose origin seems to be purely accidental, what shall we say of those admitted to be the result of reflection."

"We might even predict annually how many individuals will stain their hands with the blood of their fellow-men, how many will be forgers, how many will deal in poison, pretty nearly in the same way as we may foretell annual births and deaths."

"Every social state supposes... a certain number and a certain order of crimes, these being merely the necessary consequences of its organisation. This observation, so discouraging at first sight, becomes, on the contrary, consolatory, when examined more nearly, by showing the possibility of ameliorating the human race, by modifying their institutions, their habits, the amount of their information, and, generally, all which influences their mode of existence."

"This observation is merely the extension of a law well known to all who have studied the condition of society in a philosophic manner: it is, that so long as the same causes exist, we must expect a repetition of the same effects. What has induced some to believe that moral phenomena did not obey this law, has been the too great influence ascribed all times to man himself over his actions."

"It is a remarkable fact in the history of science, that the more extended human knowledge has become, the more limited human power, in that respect, has constantly appeared. This globe, of which man imagines the haughty possessor, becomes, in the eyes of astronomer, merely a grain of dust floating in immensity of space: an earthquake, a tempest, an inundation, may destroy in an instant an entire people, or ruin the labours of twenty ages. ...But if each step in the career of science thus gradually diminishes his importance, his pride has a compensation in the greater idea of his intellectual power, by which he has been enabled to perceive those laws which seem to be, by their nature, placed for ever beyond his grasp."

"Moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive... at the fundamental principle, that the greater the number of individuals observed, the more do individual peculiarities, whether physical or moral, become effaced, and leave in a prominent point of view the general facts, by virtue of which society exists and is preserved."

"This reaction of man upon himself, is one of his noblest attributes; it offers, indeed, the finest field for the display of his activity. As a member of the social body, he is subjected every instant to the necessity of these causes, and pays them a regular tribute; but as a man, employing all the energy of his intellectual faculties, he in some measure masters these causes, and modifies their effects, thus constantly endeavouring to improve his condition."

"Society prepares the crime, and the guilty are only the instruments by which it is executed."

"The influence of Quetelet's ideas spread throughout the sciences, even to the physical sciences. The two primary founders of the modern kinetic theory of gases, based on considerations of probability, were James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann. Both acknowledged their debt to Quetelet. ...historians generally consider the influence of the natural sciences on the social sciences, whereas in the case of Maxwell and Boltzmann, there is an influence of the social sciences on the natural sciences, as Theodore Porter has shown."

"God had been forcefully excluded from astronomy during the French Revolution, when Pierre-Simon Laplace rewrote Newton's ideas to create his [Laplace's] deterministic cosmos, in which scientific laws govern every movement of every planet with no need for divine intervention. Inspired by his success, a Belgian astronomer called Alphonse Quetelet decided that human societies are also controlled by laws. ...and so Quetelet suggested that an 'average man' can consistently encapsulate a nation's characteristics. ...Quetelet's successors took his ideas in many different directions. ...Data collection projects proliferated, and statisticians searched for laws governing every aspect of life. ...In physics, the most important application of statistics was to gases."

"The most important of Quetelet's statistical principles... include the conception of the Average Man as a type, the significance for social science of the regularities found in the moral actions of man, and the theoretical basis of the distribution of group phenomena about their type."

"Quetelet published quite a number of poems, and until the age of thirty he continued to exercise his poetical talents as pastime and relief from his scientific studies. His poems were of a serious tone, but were well received by both public and critics. We may mention here an Essai sur la romance, which Quetelet brought out in 1823. ...This essay, together with translations, in prose and in verse, of German, English, Italian, and Spanish romances, shows Quetelet's wide acquaintance at that early age with the various European literatures."

"As a man of science he was admired; in political affairs he was respected; in private life he was beloved."

"In the history of natural science, Quetelet will, with good right, be placed in the rank of Pascal, Leibnitz, Bernoulli, Laplace, Poisson, and such scientists."

"The mere enumeration of his contributions to pure and mixed mathematics would occupy a very large space, and from their intrinsic merit, patient and conscientious research and earnest regard for truth, would alone have secured him a foremost place among the distinguished and scientific men of the present century."

"In principle, wrote Quetelet, the courage or criminality of a real person could be established... but it was wholly unnecessary for social physics. Instead, the physicist need only arrange that courageous and criminal acts be recorded throughout society, as the latter already were, and then the average man could be assigned a "penchant for crime" equal to the number of criminal acts committed divided by the population. In this way, a set of discrete acts by distinct individuals was transformed into a continuous magnitude... an attribute of the average man."

"Maxwell... mastered electricity and magnetism, light and heat, pretty much mopping up all the major areas of physics beyond those that Newton had... taken care of—gravitation and the laws of motion. ...Maxwell detected an essential shortcoming in Newton's laws of motion, too. They worked... for macroscopic objects, like cannonballs and rocks. But what about the submicroscopic molecules from which such objects were made? ...Newton's laws ...did you no good because you could not possibly trace the motion of an individual molecule ...Maxwell applied the sort of statistical thinking that Quetelet had promoted."

"Maxwell probably first encountered Quetelet in an article by... John Herschel... (...familiar with Quetelet as a fellow astronomer). Later, in 1857, Maxwell read a newly published book by... Henry Thomas Buckle. Buckle, himself clearly influenced by Quetelet, believed that science could discover the "laws of the human mind" and that human actions are a part of "one vast system of universal order." ...Though Maxwell found Buckle's book "bumptious," he recognized it as a source of original ideas, and the statistical reasoning Buckle applied to society seemed just the thing... needed to deal with molecular motion."

"No other work in the English language contains such an extensive and succinct account of the different branches of physics or exhibits such a general knowledge of the whole field in so small a compass."

"In India, there's lack of appreciation of the need to cross-examine data, the responsibility of a statistician."

"The spirit and outlook of 'Sankhya' will be universal, but its form and content must necessarily be, to some extent, regional. We shall keep the special needs of India in view without, however, restricting the scope of the journal in any way. We shall naturally devote closer attention to the collection and analysis of data relating to India, but we shall try to study all Indian questions in relation to world problems.... The study of modern statistical methods in its infancy in our country, and we do not expect to be able to achieve immediate results. We shall be satisfied if we can help by our humble efforts to lay the foundations for future work."

"He sometimes spoke of "zero" as the symbol of the absolute (Nirguna Brahman) of the extreme monistic school of Hindu philosophy, that is, the reality to which no qualities can be attributed, which cannot be defined or described by words and which is completely beyond the reach of the human mind. According to Ramanujan the appropriate symbol was the number "zero" which is the absolute negation of all attributes."

"Because demography is concerned with human affairs and human populatlons it is possible, in principle, to consider demography as a sub-field of many other subjects. It provided the scope of any particular subject-field like anthropology, genetics, ecology, economics, sociology, etc., and is defined in a sufficiently comprehensive manner. While not denying the possibility of considering demography as a sub-field of one or another subject, at least for certain special purposes, it is suggested that demography should be logically viewed as the totality of convergent and inter-related factors and topics which (although these could be, spearately, the concern of many difl'erent subjects like genetics and anthropology, sociology, education, psychology. economics, social and political affairs etc.) jointly, together with their mutual inter-actions, form the determinants as well as the consequences of growth (or decline), changes in composition, territorial movements, and social mobility of population in different geographical regions or in the world as a whole, at any given period of time, or over difl'erent periods of time. Such a view would supply an aggregative, inter-related, and mutually interacting system of all those factors which have any influence over, or are influenced by, demographic or population changes over space and time."

"Population in India is widely differentiated in ethnic composition, geographical and climatic conditions, social and cultural stratification, as well as by differences in economic status. Differential fertility therefore assumes a far more complex picture in India than anywhere in the world. Ethnic. geographical. socio-cultural and economic dilferences give a four-fold patterning with many complicated interactions. It is essential therefore to study different population groups separately."

"some evidence is available to indicate that, in India, an increase in the income of the poorer people leads to an increase in the size of the family; and also that this tapers off after a certain critical level of income is attained, and is followed by a reduction in the size of the family at higher levels of living When a sufficient number of people reach the critical income, there would be a gradual decrease in the average birth rate with further increase in income."

"The transformation of the advanced countries to their present stage has been brought about by the acceptance of a scientific and rational view of life and nature. The scientific view has already permeated in a large measure the administrative organizations of the advanced countries. The scientific revolution, the social revolution and the industrial revolution are three aspects of the modernization of every society; these three aspects may be distinguished but cannot be separated. The rate of economic growth in every country is determined both directly and indirectly by the rate of progress of science and technology; directly through the utilization of the results of research and development, and indirectly through institutional changes brought about by the increasing influence of the scientific out-look and tradition."

"India has a medieval and authoritarian structure of society and the tradition of science is not yet strong. The power of government officials is increasing as an inescapable result of the pervasive anthoritarian character of lndian society."

"In the absence of social awareness and appreciation of the scientific objectivity among sufficiently large number of civil servants or political leaders,the need of validity has not yet been accepted in the official statistical system in India. Ofcial statistics in India is treated as an integral part of the dministrative system which is regulated by the principle of authority. Approval of statistical estimates at a high level of authority is accepted as a bstitnte for validity in many ases there is continuing opposition to independent cross-hccks for the validity of the data. Officials have the feeling that two independent estimates, which might differ would be confusing and, in fact unthinkable; therefore independent cross-checks in statistics should be eliminated."

"Without the progress of equality and improvement in the level of living at least beyond the poverty line, for one quarter of the population of the world who live in South Asia, there would be grave repercussions on the rest of the world. The problem of the underdeveloped country is, in one sense, of greater concern to the advanced countries because international rivalries and tensions arise from the desire to establish spheres of influence over underdeveloped areas. The very existence of underdeveloped regions would he therefore a continuing threat to world security, and world peace. A quick transformation of the underdeveloped countries into industrialized economies would reduce the sphere of conflicting interests; and hence decrease the tension between East and West."

"We believe that the idea underlying this integral concept of statistics finds adequate expression in the ancient Indian work Sankhya in |Sanskrit the usual meaning is ‘number‘, but the original root meaning was ‘determinate knowledge’ in the Atharva Veda a derivative from Sankhyata occurs both in the sense of ‘well-known‘ as well as ‘numbered’. The lexicons give both meanings. Amarakosa gives Sankhya – vicarana (deliberation, analysis) as well as ‘number’; also Sankhyavan – panditah (wise, learned)."

"It would be, however, a fatal mistake to establish an expensive system of education on the model of the advanced countries which would have little relevance to local needs and would be beyond the means of the national economy. It is necessary to evolve a system, through experimentation and trial and success, which would be within the means of the national economy."

"[He} was one of Tagore's rare friends who did not place him simply on a high pedestal full of only aura and fame, but treated him as a lively intellectual and affectionate companion."

"Just as Tagore sought to bring humanity closer through Visva-Bharati or his one-nest-world university at Santiniketan, Prasanta Chandra strove to use the ideal of humanism through statistics."

"The 'Mahalanobis Era' in statistics which started in the early twenties has ended. Indeed it will be remembered for all time to come as the golden period of statistics in India, marked by intensive development of a new technology and its applications for the welfare of mankind."

"C.R.Rao quoted in }Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis""

"...l have been deeply struck by his broad and comprehensive approach to National Development and his astonishing energy. He is full of ideas and it is always a pleasure to discuss any subject with him."

"I need hardly say that I refer to the emergence of a statistically competent technique of Sample Survey, with which I believe Professor Mahalanobis name will always be associated."

"What at first strongly attracted my admiration was that the Professor‘s work was not imitative….The experience of India will serve as a guidance and as an example worthy of imitating."

"Seng in "Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in India""

"No technique of random sample has, so far as I can find, been developed in the United States or elsewhere, which can compare in accuracy or in economy with that described by Professor Mahalanobis."

"Everybody knows him as the founder of the Indian Statistical Institute, the architect of the Second Five Year Plan, a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore and as one who had richly contributed to the social, cultural and intellectual life in Bengal. All those in the statistical profession were aware of his deep contributions to statistical theory, his efforts in providing a sound database to the Indian economy, and the part he played in placing India not far from the centre of the statistical map of the world. Those who have been closely associated with him have witnessed the indomitable courage and tenacity in fighting opposition for a good cause and clearing obstacles for propagating right principles."

"l have always noticed how you are always capable to maintain objectivity in your judgement about people and l have always recognised that to be a great quality in you."

"What you have written after analyzing everything connected with my achievements and fame is altogether correct."

"l have liked your article very much. The way you have narrated the history of my humanism in an evolutionary perspective has made this aspect of mine clearer even to me."

"If Mahalanobis had done nothing else, if he had only founded Sankhya, the Indian Journal of Statistics, even so his contribution to science would have been outstanding and memorable. Sankhya is an international journal in the sense that it receives contributions from statisticians and probabilists the world over; international as in the sense of maintaining a standard comparable to the best in the world. And this has been from the very beginning. This is something that cannot be said of many scientific journals in the country"

"A time series is a sequence of observations, usually ordered in time, although in some cases the ordering may be according to another dimension. The feature of time series analysis which distinguishes it from other statistical analysis is the explicit recognition of the importance of the order in which the observations are made. While in many problems the observations are statistically independent, in time series successive observations may be dependent, and the dependence may depend on the positions in the sequence. The nature of a series and the structure of its generating process also may involve in other ways the sequence in which the observations are taken."

"[At Princeton Samuel Wilks...] was the major interest for me... I did have a contact with Oscar Morgenstern... Von Neumann was developing theory of games at the time... but I must say, I really didn't understand it very well when he lectured it."

"Early in 1943 I got full time war research work... My first project was to evaluate long term weather forecast. Longe range, in that time, meant three to four days."

"In mathematical statistics, as well as econometrics, Ted Anderson is a scholar of immense stature. The scope and diversity of his research in statistical theory is almost a phenomenon in itself. Sometimes it seems that wherever one turns the subject, Ted's mark and influence is already firmly established. His books on multivariate analysis and time series rapidly became accepted as major treatises and are now integral parts of the bookshelves of every statistician."

"Much of T. W. Anderson's work in statistical theory has had an important influence on econometrics. But it is his work on structural estimation that has had the greatest impact on subsequent developments in the subject."

"Research in statistical theory and techniques is necessarily mathematical, scholarly, and abstract in character, requiring some degree of leisure, detachment, and access to a good mathematical and historical library. The importance of continuing such research is very great, though it is not always obvious to those whose interest is entirely in practical applications of already existing theory. Excepting in the presence of active research in pure science, the application of the science tend to drop into a deadly rut of unthinking routine, incapable of progress beyond a limited range predetermined by the accomplishments of pure science, and are in constant danger of falling into the hands of people who do not really understand the tools that they are working with and who are out of touch with those that do. ... It is in fact rather absurd, though quite in line with the precedents of earlier centuries, that scientific men of the highest talents can live only by doing work that could be done by others of lesser special abilities, while the real worth of their most important work receives no official recognition."

"My thesis, paradoxically, and a little provocatively, but nonetheless genuinely, is simply this : PROBABILITY DOES NOT EXIST.The abandonment of superstitious beliefs about the existence of Phlogiston, the Cosmic Ether, Absolute Space and Time, ... , or Fairies and Witches, was an essential step along the road to scientific thinking. Probability, too, if regarded as something endowed with some kind of objective existence, is no less a misleading misconception, an illusory attempt to exteriorize or materialize our true probabilistic beliefs."

"Probabilistic reasoning—always to be understood as subjective—merely stems from our being uncertain about something."

"I think I’m starting to resolve a puzzle that’s been bugging me for awhile. Pop economists (or, at least, pop micro-economists) are often making one of two arguments:1. People are rational and respond to incentives. Behavior that looks irrational is actually completely rational once you think like an economist. 2. People are irrational and they need economists, with their open minds, to show them how to be rational and efficient. Argument 1 is associated with “why do they do that?” sorts of puzzles. Why do they charge so much for candy at the movie theater, why are airline ticket prices such a mess, why are people drug addicts, etc. The usual answer is that there’s some rational reason for what seems like silly or self-destructive behavior. Argument 2 is associated with “we can do better” claims such as why we should fire 80% of public-schools teachers or Moneyball-style stories about how some clever entrepreneur has made a zillion dollars by exploiting some inefficiency in the market. The trick is knowing whether you’re gonna get 1 or 2 above. They’re complete opposites!"

"I’m not saying that arguments based on rationality are necessarily wrong in particular cases. (I can’t very well say that, given that I wrote an article on why it can be rational to vote.) I’m just trying to understand how pop-economics can so rapidly swing back and forth between opposing positions. And I think it’s coming from the comforting presence of rationality and efficiency in both formulations. It’s ok to distinguish economists from ordinary people (economists are rational and think the unthinkable, ordinary people don’t) and it’s also ok to distinguish economists from other social scientists (economists think ordinary people are rational, other social scientists believe in “culture”). You just have to be careful not to make both arguments in the same paragraph."

"My dissertation for the Ph.D. degree at the University of Michigan was on applications of vectorial methods to metric geometry (in the sense of the Menger school), especially with a view to the merging of metric geometry in that sense with differential geometry. Professor S B Myers at the University of Michigan sponsored my dissertation, but I was particularly close to R L Wilder there."

"For a person who wants to do original, realistic, and critical work in statistics there is no atmosphere anywhere in the world today to compare with this Department."

"[The George E. P. Box paper Fitting empirical data (1960) is] a mature exposition of an important branch of statistics, to which the author has made great contributions. One feature of particular interest is practical discussion of genuinely nonlinear fitting problems and their solution with the help of tact and a special, publicly available, IBM-704 program. Another is insightful comments on the role of prior distributions in statistics."

"[Leonard Jimmie Savage is] one of the few people I have met whom I would unhesitatingly call a genius."

"R. A. Fisher, J. Neyman, R. von Mises, W. Feller, and L. J. Savage denied vehemently that probability theory is an extension of logic, and accused Laplace and Jeffreys of committing metaphysical nonsense for thinking that it is."

"It was only when L. J. Savage arrived on the scene, and championed the work of Ramsey and de Finetti that the work of these two pioneers in subjective probability first received serious philosophical attention."

"Heredity. Given any organ in a parent and the same or any other organ in its offspring, the mathematical measure of heredity is the correlation of these organs for pairs of parent and offspring... The word organ here must be taken to include any characteristic which can be quantitatively measured."

"The purpose of the mathematical theory of statistics is to deal with the relationship between 2 or more variable quantities without assuming that one is a single-valued mathematical function of the rest. The statistician does not think a certain x will produce a single-valued y; not a causative relation but a correlation. The relationship between x and y will be somewhere within a zone and we have to work out the probability that the point (x,y) will lie in different parts of that zone. The physicist is limited and shrinks the zone into a line. Our treatment will fit all the vagueness of biology, sociology, etc. A very wide science."

"[M]y axiom runs as follows: "The whole is not identical with a part." This axiom leads us at once to a problem. What relation has the part to the whole?"

"I simply assert that the universe alters, is "becoming;" what it is becoming I will not venture to say. ...the individual too is altering, is not only a "being" but also a "becoming." These alterations... I shall—merely for convenience—term life."

"What relation has the life of the individual to the life of the universe? ...The former is absolutely subordinate, inconceivably infinitesimal compared with the latter. The becoming of the latter bears not the slightest apparent reference to the becoming of the former. ...The one seems finite, limited, temporal, the other by comparison infinite, boundless, eternal. This disparity has forced itself upon the attention of man ever since his first childlike attempts at thought."

"The "Eternal Why" begins to haunt his mind; "Why... am I here?" he asks. What relation do I, a part, bear to the whole—the sum of all things material and spiritual? What connection has the finite with the infinite? the temporal with the eternal?"

"Primitive man... rushes to the satisfactory conclusion that that power must be itself infinite; that he, man, is not altogether finite, and so he constructs a doctrine of the soul and its immortality. Then he builds up myths, superstitions, primitive religions, dogmas, whereby the infinite is made subject to the finite—floating on this huge bladder of man's supposed immortality. The universe is given a purpose, and that purpose is man—the whole is made subordinate to the part. That is the first solution of the problem, the keystone of most concrete religions."

"[D]efinition... Religion is the relation of the finite to the infinite. ...is the relation. ...[T]here is only one relation, there can be only one religion. ...only so far true as it actually explains the relation of the finite to the infinite. In so far as it builds up an imaginary relation between finite and infinite it is false. ...[S]ince no existing religion lays out before us fully the relation of finite and infinite, all systems of religion are of necessity but half truths. ...not whole falsehoods, for many... may have made... small advance towards the solution..."

"The great danger... not content with our real knowledge of the relation of the finite to the infinite, they slur over our vast ignorance by the help of the imagination. Myth supplies the place of true knowledge where we are ignorant of the connection between finite and infinite. Hence... most concrete systems of religion present us with a certain amount of knowledge but a great deal of myth."

"[O]ur [small] knowledge of the relation of finite to infinite... is... continually increasing—science and philosophy are continally presenting... broader views of the relation of man to nature and of individual thought to abstract thought."

"It follows... that... in every concrete religion the knowledge element ought to increase and the myth element decrease or... every concrete religion ought to be in a state of development."

"[S]mall as our increase in knowledge may be, concrete systems of religion have not kept pace with it. They persist in explaining by myth, portions of the relation of... which we have true knowledge. Hence we see the danger, if not the absolute evil of any myth at all."

"An imaginary explanation... too often impedes the true explanation when man has attained it. This gives rise to the so-called contests of religion and science or of religion and philosophy—the unintelligible conflicts of "faith" and "reason" which can only arise in the minds of those, who cannot perceive clearly the distinction between myth and knowledge."

"The holding of a myth explanation of any problem whereon mankind has attained true knowledge is what I term enslaved thought or dogmatism."

"The rejection of all myth explanation, the reception of all ascertained truths with regard to the relation of the finite to the infinite is what I term freethought or true religious knowledge. ...[T]he freethinker ...possesses more real religion, more of the relation of the finite to the infinite than any mere believer in myth; his very knowledge makes him in the highest sense of the word a religious man."

"The original work as planned by Clifford was to have been entitled The First Principles of the Mathematical Sciences Explained to the Non-Mathematical and to have contained six chapters on Number, Space, Quantity, Position, Motion, and Mass respectively. ...Shortly before his death he expressed a wish that the book should only be published after very careful revision and that its title should be changed to [our title]. Upon Clifford's death the labour of revision and completion was entrusted to Mr. R. C. Rowe... On the sad death of Professor Rowe... I was requested... to take up the... editing thus left incomplete. ...For the latter half of Chapter III and for the whole of Chapter IV... I am alone responsible. Yet whatever there is in them of value I owe to Clifford; whatever is feeble or obscure is my own. ...With Chapter V. my task has been by no means light. ... I felt it impossible to rewrite the whole without depriving the work of its right to be called Clifford's, and yet at the same time it was absolutely necessary to make considerable changes. ...Without any notice of mass or force it seemed impossible to close a discussion on motion; something I felt must be added. I have accordingly introduced a few pages on the laws of motion [and] since found that Clifford intended to write a concluding chapter on mass. How to express the laws of motion in a form of which Clifford would have approved was indeed an insoluble riddle... because I was unaware of his having written on the subject. I have accordingly expressed... my own views on the subject [i.e.,] a strong desire to see the terms matter and force, together with the ideas associated with them, entirely removed from scientific terminology—to reduce, in fact, all dynamic to kinematic. I should hardly have ventured to put forward these views had I not recently discovered that they have... the weighty authority of Professor Mach... But since writing these pages I have also been referred to a discourse delivered by Clifford at the Royal Institution in 1873, some... of which appeared in Nature June 10, 1880 [pp. 122-123.] Therein it is stated that 'no mathematician can give any meaning to the language about matter, force, inertia used in current text-books of mechanics.' This fragmentary account of the discourse undoubtedly proves that Clifford held on the categories of matter and force as clear and original ideas as on all subjects of which he has treated; only, alas! they have not been preserved. Footnote: Mr. R. Tucker who... searched Clifford's note books... sends me... the following... in Clifford's handwriting: 'Force is not a fact at all, but an idea embodying what is approximately the fact.'"

"We may... be treating merely as physical variations effects which are really due to changes in the curvature of our space; whether, in fact, some or all of those causes which we term physical may not be due to the geometrical construction of our space. There are three kinds of variation in the curvature of our space which we ought to consider as within the range of possibility. (i) Our space is perhaps really possessed of a curvature varying from point to point, which we fail to appreciate because we are acquainted with only a small portion of space, or because we disguise its small variations under changes in our physical condition which we do not connect with our change of position. The mind that could recognise this varying curvature might be assumed to know the absolute position of a point. For such a mind the postulate of the relativity of position would cease to have a meaning. It does not seem so hard to conceive such a state of mind as the late Professor Clerk-Maxwell would have had us believe. It would be one capable of distinguishing those so-called physical changes which are really geometrical or due to a change of position in space. (ii) Our space may be really same (of equal curvature), but its degree of curvature may change as a whole with the time. In this way our geometry based on the sameness of space would still hold good for all parts of space, but the change of curvature might produce in space a succession of apparent physical changes. (iii) We may conceive our space to have everywhere a nearly uniform curvature, but that slight variations of the curvature may occur from point to point, and themselves vary with the time. These variations of the curvature with the time may produce effects which we not unnaturally attribute to physical causes independent of the geometry of our space. We might even go so far as to assign to this variation of the curvature of space 'what really happens in that phenomenon which we term the motion of matter.'"

"I fear that... I may appear to have exceeded the duty of an editor. For all the Articles in this volume whose numbers are enclosed in square brackets I am alone responsible, as well as for the corresponding footnotes, and the Appendix... The principle which has guided me throughout the additions I have made has been to make the work... a standard work of reference for its own branch of science. ...It forms ...the history of a peculiar phase of intellectual development, worth studying for the many side lights it throws on general human progress. On the other hand it serves as a guide to the investigator in what has been done, and what ought to be done. ...[T]he individualism of modern science has not infrequently led to a great waste of power; the same... work has been repeated in different countries at different times, owing to the absence of such histories... [T]he would-be researcher either wastes much of his time in learning the history... or else works away regardless of earlier investigators. ...I have endeavoured to give it completeness (1) as a history of developement, (2) as a guide to what has been accomplished."

"The whole early history... is... so intimately connected with the names Galilei, Hooke, Mariotte and Leibniz that I have introduced some account of their work. The labours of Lagrange and Riccati also required some recognition. ...These early writers form the basis... not without interest, whether judged from the special standpoint of the elastician or from the wider footing of... the growth of human ideas. With a similar aim I have introduced throughout the volume... memoirs having purely historical value which had escaped Dr Hunter's notice. Another class of memoirs which I have inserted are... of mathematical value, omitted apparently by pure accident. For example all the memoirs of F. E. Neumann, the second memoir of Duhamel, those of [P. H.] Blanchet etc. I cannot hope that the work is complete in this respect even now, but I trust that nothing of equal importance has escaped..."

"My greatest difficulty arose with regard to the rigid line which Dr Todhunter had attempted to draw between mathematical and physical memoirs. Thus while including an account of Clausius' memoir of 1849, he had omitted Weber's of 1835, yet the consideration of the former demands the inclusion of the latter... [with respect to] elastic after-strain. What seemed... needful at... present... was to place before the mathematician the results of physical investigations that he might have some distinct guide to the direction in which research is required. ...I have endeavoured... to abrogate this divorce between mathematical elasticity on the one hand, and physical and technical elasticity on the other. With this aim... I have introduced the general conclusions of a considerable body of physical and technical memoirs in the hope that... I may bring the mathematician closer to the physicist and both to the practical engineer. I trust that in doing so I have rendered this History of value... and so increased the usefulness of Dr Todhunter's... years of patient historical research on the more purely mathematical side of elasticity. In this matter I have kept before me the labours of M. de Saint Venant as a true guide to the functions of the ideal elastician."

"That it does not pay to gamble has been the oft repeated theme of the moralist, and has been demonstrated with much brave show of symbols by mathematicians from Lagrange to De Morgan and onwards."

"While the moralists have boldly asserted that the service of the goddess Chance leads to a complete demoralisation of her worshippers... the mathematicians... start from the hypothesis that gambling is a game of chance—chance being defined in their own perfectly clear and definite sense. My object... is to show that chance in this sense... as it applies to the tossing of an unloaded coin, has no application to Monte Carlo ."

"The scientific conception of chance is that of a measure based on experience; a knowledge of the average results of many events is used to replace ignorance of the result of any individual event. ...The judgment which Science gives in this case is decisive; judged by the so called "permanences," or runs of colour, Monte Carlo roulette is no true worship of the goddess at all."

"25,000 tosses of a shilling occupied a good portion of my vacation and... gave me... a bad reputation in the neighbourhood... A friend and former pupil supplemented... 8200 penny trials and the drawing of 9000 tickets from a bag while another kindly provided... nearly 23,000 drawings of coloured and numbered counters. In all these cases the results were in... strikingly close agreement with theory."

"In my enthusiasm Monte Carlo appeared to me in a new light; it was clearly a scientific laboratory preparing material for the natural philosopher."

"[T]he records of the tables are published in... Le Monaco and issued weekly in Paris... eight weeks roulette gave a grand total of 33,000 events. ...M. Blanc deserved a niche in the temple of science and Le Monaco a shelf in every mathematician's library."

"[R]andom spinning being assumed, the distribution of chance in the game depends upon the mechanical perfection of the teetotum; it must be equally likely to fall on all its thirty-seven sides, i.e. the frequency of all the numbers must in the long run be very nearly the same."

"[W]e have an equal number of black and red possibilities... Thus in a very great number of throws there ought to be 50 per cent of both. ...In no case... are the results exactly reached, but in all the cases of large numbers we have but small deviations from 50 per cent. Thus 16,141 roulette throws give slightly better results than 12,000 and slightly worse results than 24,000 tosses. We notice that... 16,019 roulette throws give nearly the worst percentage 50.27 instead of 50."

"[F]or every type of experiment there is a numerical quantity, depending partly on the chance of the single event succeeding, and partly on the total number of the trials of it, which we may term the '. ... it gives us a measure of the frequency with which deviations of various sizes will occur."

"[W]e find out of 16,019 trials, 8053 red numbers instead of 8009 or 8010. We have a deviation of 43 to 44. The standard deviation is about 63; a deviation as great as or greater than 44 would occur in about half the number of times in which 16,019 returns were examined. It presents therefore nothing of the remarkable or improbable."

"The next point to which I turned my attention was the frequency with which the several numbers themselves occurred. ...Each number might be expected to have occurred either 447 or 448 times. ... I found that they fitted to a standard deviation of 15.85 while the theoretical standard was 20.87 giving a difference of 5. ...What is a reasonable amount for the standard deviation of an experiment of this kind to differ from its theoretical value..? The mathematician answers... by finding the standard deviation of the standard deviation. It turned out... to be 2.43... the odds against a divergence as large or larger than 5...were ...21 to 1. In every two years I might expect such a deviation from the most probable results to occur once. ...I ...increased ...by counting the numbers for each week in the month instead of the total month. Here the experimental standard deviation [was] 7.2, the theoretical being 10.34, a difference of 3.14, while the standard deviation between experiment and theory was only 0.60. The odds against a divergence so great as this are... about 2,000,000 to 1."

"I felt somewhat taken aback. ...to have hit upon a month of roulette ...so improbable ...that it would only occur on the average once in 167,000 years of continuous roulette playing."

"I determined to... investigate how closely the runs, that is, successions of numbers of the same colour were in accord with theory. ...The chance of a head=\frac{1}{2}, of two heads succeeding each other \frac{1}{2}\times\frac{1}{2} = \frac{1}{4}, of three heads \frac{1}{2}\times\frac{1}{2}\times\frac{1}{2} = \frac{1}{8}, and so on. Calling a "set" the run of tosses or the throws of the roulette ball till a change of face or of colour comes, the chance of a change=\frac{1}{2}, of a persistence followed by a change \frac{1}{2}\times\frac{1}{2} = \frac{1}{4}, and so on. ...[I]n the case of the roulette on one occasion the actual deviation is nearly ten times the standard.... The odds are thousand millions to one against such a deviation as nine or ten times the standard. ..My pupil... tabulated... the runs in a second fortnight's play with the result... so improbable that it was only to be expected once in 5000 years of continuous roulette. ...Finally, Mr. de Whalley investigated 7976 throws of the ball, forming a fortnight's play, at a slightly later date... There resulted deviations 4.63, 4.62, and 4.44 times the standard deviation, or odds of upwards of 263,000 to 1... That one such fortnight of runs should have occurred in the year 1892 might be looked upon as a veritable miracle, that three should have occurred is absolutely conclusive. Roulette as played at Monte Carlo is not a scientific game of chance."

"The absence of the improbable, the redundancy of the probable, is just as much conclusive evidence against conformity with scientific law as the too frequent occurrence of the improbable itself."

"No statements of mere averages... are of the least avail against our statistics. Fluctuations from the averages are the sole reliable test..."

"Monte Carlo roulette, if judged by returns which are published... is, if the laws of chance rule, from the standpoint of exact science the most prodigious miracle of the nineteenth century."

"[W]e are forced to accept... that the random spinning of a roulette manufactured and daily readjusted with extraordinary care is not obedient to the laws of chance, but is chaotic in its manifestations."

"[W]e appeal to the French Académie des Sciences, to obtain from its secretary, M. Bertrand... a report on the colour runs of the Monte Carlo roulette tables for... 1892. Should he confirm the conclusion... that these runs do not obey the scientific theory of chance, then science must reconstruct its theories to suit these inconvenient facts..."

"Clearly, since the Casino does not serve the valuable end of huge laboratory for the preparation of probability statistics, it has no scientific raison d'être. Men of science cannot have their most refined theories disregarded in this shameless manner! The French Government must be urged by the hierarchy of science to close the gaming-saloons; it would be, of course, a graceful act to hand over the remaining resources of the Casino to the Académie des Sciences for the endowment of a laboratory of orthodox probability; in particular, of the new branch of that study, the application of the theory of chance to the biological problems of evolution, which is likely to occupy so much of men's thoughts in the near future."

"There is an old German proverb: "Death has no calendar," which taken in conjunction with our... "Death is no respecter of persons," strongly marks the folk conception... as of one who obeys no rule of time, or of place, or of age, or of sex, or of household..."

"This idea of Death as the lawless one... who strikes at random, arose early in mediaeval tradition, and is represented in the well known Dances of Death... Parallel with this notion... has run in the mind of the folk a vague idea of Chance as that which obeys no rule and defies all measure and prediction. The two conceptions cross one another in the medieval representation of Death seizing the gambler's dice-box and casting the dice with him for his life."

"Chance... the origin of the word itself is very possibly related to the falling of the dice from their box,—and certainly the first attempts at a theory of Chance arose from the general interest in gambling with dice."

"[B]ear these points in mind, the association of Death and Chance, the notion of both as chaotic in their action, and their embodiment in a great artistic ideal—the Dance of Death—which gave so much colouring to mediaeval thought and life. We find this sombre notion everywhere—on the church walls, on the bridges, in the engravings and s, but as well in the sermons, the poetry, and the very turn of folk-sentiment."

"The shadow of death, more strongly even than blood or nation, maketh mankind akin; it arouses sympathy and understanding, which surmount all the barriers of caste and station."

"The old Dances of Death supplied what fails so much in our modern life—an artistic representation appealing to all classes of at least one experience common to the whole of humanity."

"Standing in 1875 on the well known wooden bridge at Luzern, with its pictures of the Dance of Death, it struck me that something might be done to resuscitate the mediaeval conception of the relation between Death and Chance and to express it in a more modern scientific form. ...[M]y aim in this essay is to place before the reader a modern conception of the Dance of Death."

"[O]ur conception of Chance is now utterly different from that of yore. Where we cannot predict, where we do not find order and regularity, there we should now assert... that something else than Chance is at work. What we are to understand by a chance distribution is one in accordance with law, and one the nature of which can... be closely predicted."

"It is not theory, but actual statistical experience, which forces us to the conclusion that, however little we know of what will happen in the individual instance, yet the frequency of a large number of instances is distributed round the mode in a manner more and more smooth and uniform the greater the number of individual instances. When this distribution round the mode does not take place... then we assert that some cause other than chance is at work."

"Our conception of chance is one of law and order in large numbers; it is not that idea of chaotic incidence which vexed the mediaeval mind."

"Step by step men of science are coming to recognise that mechanism is not at the bottom of phenomena, but is only the conceptual shorthand by aid of which they can briefly describe and resume phenomena."

"That all science is description and not explanation, that the mystery of change in the inorganic world is just as great and just as omnipresent as in the organic world, are statements which will appear platitudes to the next generation."

"Formerly men had belief as to the supersensuous and thought they had knowledge of the sensuous. The science of the future, while agnostic as to the supersensuous, will replace knowledge by belief in the perceptual sphere, and reserve the term knowledge for the conceptual sphere—the region of their own concepts and ideas..."

"That this change of view as to the basis of science cannot take place without misunderstanding, or without giving an opportunity to those who dislike science to decry its weaknesses, is only natural. To change the basis of operations during a campaign always gives a chance to the enemy, but the chance must be risked if thereby we place ourselves permanently in a position of greater strength..."

"If the reader questions whether there is still war between science and dogma, I must reply that there always will be as long as knowledge is opposed to ignorance. To know requires exertion, and it is intellectually easiest to shirk effort altogether by accepting phrases which cloak the unknown in the undefinable."

"[T]he need for remodelling the fundamental mechanical principles as we find them stated in elementary text-books of physics and dynamics remains as urgent as ever. Professor A. E. H. Love is, indeed, to be congratulated in having in his Theoretical Mechanics ventured a good way in the right direction, but his work will hardly be used for elementary science teaching, and it is through the latter only that we can hope to give the new and sounder scientific conceptions general currency."

"For the present the Grammar may yet be of service. After an eight years' life and... 4000 copies, it reappears in a revised and enlarged form."

"[P]rogress... enables me to define several... conceptions much more accurately than was possible in 1892, and to indicate, if only in vague outline, what a fascinating field is being here transferred from the synoptic to the precise division of science."

"There are periods in the growth of science when it is well to turn our attention from its imposing superstructure and to carefully examine its foundations. The present book is primarily intended as a criticism of the fundamental concepts of modern science..."

"The obscurity which envelops the principia of science is not only due to an historical evolution influenced by the authority which attaches even to the phraseology used by great discoverers, but to the fact that science, as long as it had to carry on a difficult warfare with metaphysics and dogma, like a skilful general conceived it best to hide its own deficient organisation."

"[T]his deficient organisation will not only in time be perceived by the enemy, but... has already had a very discouraging influence both on scientific recruits and on intelligent laymen."

"Anything more hopelessly illogical than the statements with regard to force and matter current in elementary text-books of science, it is difficult to imagine; and the author, as a result of some ten years' teaching and examining, has been forced to the conclusion that these works possess little, if any, educational value; they neither encourage the growth of logical clearness nor form any exercise in scientific method."

"One result of this obscurity we probably find in the ease with which the physicist, as compared with either the pure mathematician or the historian, is entangled in the meshes of such pseudosciences as and spiritualism."

"[T]his work... is... intended to arouse and stimulate the reader's own thought, rather than to inculcate doctrine: this result is often best achieved by the assertion and contradiction which excite the reader to independent inquiry."

"The views expressed in this Grammar on the fundamental concepts of science, especially on those of force and matter, have formed part of the author's teaching since he was first called upon (1882) to think how the elements of dynamical science could be presented free from metaphysics to young students. But the endeavour to put them into popular language only dates from... 1891..."

"[T]he tribal conscience ought for the sake of social welfare to be stronger than private interest..."

"[T]he classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification—judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind—essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own. The classification facts, the recognition of their sequence and relative significance is the function of science, and the habit of forming a judgment upon these facts unbiassed by personal feeling is characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind."

"[T]he state may be reasonably called upon to place instruction in pure science within the reach of all its citizens. ...The scientific habit of mind is one which may be acquired by all, and the readiest means of attaining to it ought to be placed within the reach of all."

"Minds trained to scientific methods are less likely to be led by mere appeal to the passions or by blind emotional excitement to sanction acts which in the end may lead to social disaster. ...therefore, I lay stress upon the educational side of modern science and state my position..: Modern Science, as training the mind to an exact and impartial analysis of facts, is an education specially fitted to promote sound citizenship."

"[T]he value of science for practical life turns upon the efficient training it provides in method. ...to marshal facts... examine their complex mutual relations and predict... their inevitable sequences... which we term natural laws...[such a man ...will scarcely be content with merely superficial statement, with vague appeal to the imagination, to the emotions, to individual prejudices. He will demand a high standard of reasoning, a clear insight into facts and their results ...beneficial to the community at large."

"If any... work gives a description of phenomena that appeals to... imagination rather than to... reason, then it is bad science."

"The scientific method is one and the same in all branches, and that method is the method of all logically trained minds. In this respect the great classics of science are often the most intelligible of books, and... are far better worth reading than popularisations of them..."

"The field of science is unlimited; its material is endless, every group of natural phenomena, every phase of social life, every stage of past or present development is material for science. The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material."

"[T]he task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases."

"Scarcely any specialist of to-day is really master of all the work which has been done in his own comparatively small field. Facts and their classification have been accumulating at such a rate that nobody seems to have leisure to recognise the relations of sub-groups to the whole. It is as if individual workers... were bringing their stones to one great building and piling them on and cementing them... without regard to any general plan... only where some one has placed a great corner stone... the building... rises... more rapidly... till it... is stopped for want of side support. Yet this great structure... possesses a symmetry and unity... in scientific method. The smallest group of facts, if properly classified and logically dealt with, ...has its proper place... wholly independent of the individual workman who... shaped it. Even when two men work unwittingly at the same stone they will but modify and correct each other... In the face of all this enormous progress... when in all civilised lands men are applying the scientific method... the goal of science is and must be infinitely distant."

"When... a simple principle has been discovered... then this principle or law itself generally leads to the discovery of a still wider range of hitherto unregarded phenomena... Every great advance of science opens our eyes to facts which we had failed before to observe, and makes new demands..."

"Where [our great-grandfathers] interpreted the motions of planets in our own solar system, we discuss the chemical constitution of stars, many of which... their telescopes could not reach... Where they discovered the circulation of the blood, we see the physical conflict of living poisons within the blood whose battles would have been absurdities for them. Where they found void... we conceive of great systems in rapid motion capable of carrying through brick walls as light passes through glass. Great as the advance of scientific knowledge has been, it has not been greater than the growth of the material to be dealt with. The universe grows ever larger as we learn to understand more of our own corner of it."

"[T]he material of science is coextensive with the whole life, physical and mental, of the universe, and... the limits to our perception of the universe are only apparent, not real."

"The universe is a variable quantity, which depends upon the keenness and structure of our organs of sense, and upon the fineness of our powers and instruments of observation."

"[T]he universe is largely the construction of each individual mind."

"To say that there are certain fields—for example, metaphysics—from which science is excluded, wherein its methods have no application, is merely to say that the rules of methodical observation and the laws of logical thought do not apply to the facts, if any, which lie within such fields. These fields, if indeed such exist, must lie outside any intelligible definition which can be given of the word knowledge."

"Each metaphysician has his own system, which to a large extent excludes that of his predecessors and colleagues. Hence... metaphysics are built either on air or on quicksands—either they start from no foundation in facts at all, or the superstructure has been raised before a basis has been found in the accurate classification facts."

"There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method."

"Our aesthetic judgment demands harmony between the representation, and the represented and in this sense science is often more artistic than modern art."

"[T]he philosophical method seems based upon an analysis which does not start with the classification of facts, but reaches its judgments by some obscure process of internal cogitation. It is therefore dangerously liable to the influence of individual bias; it results... in an endless number of competing and contradictory systems. It is because the so-called philosophical method does not, when different individuals approach the same range of facts, lead, like the scientific, to practical unanimity of judgment, that science, rather than philosophy, offers the better training for modern citizenship."

"Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant." Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making."

"[I]n the seventeenth century... the system-mongers were the theologians who declared that cosmical problems were not the legitimate problems of science. It was vain for Galilei to assert that the theologians' classification of facts was hopelessly inadequate. ...[T]hey settled that:— "The doctrine that the earth is neither the centre of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith." It took nearly two hundred years to convince the whole theological world that cosmical problems were the legitimate problems of science and science alone, for in 1819 the books of Galilei, Copernicus, and Keppler were still upon the index of forbidden books, and not till 1822 was a decree issued allowing books teaching the motion of the earth about the sun to be printed and published in Rome!"

"Wherever there is the slightest possibility for the human mind to know, there is a legitimate problem of science. Outside the field of actual knowledge can only lie a region of the vaguest opinion and imagination, to which... men too often... pay higher respect than to knowledge."

"The ignorance of science means the enforced ignorance of mankind."

"Who can give us the assurance that the fields already occupied by science are alone those in which knowledge is possible? Who, in the words of Galilei, is willing to set limits to the human intellect?"

"Professor Huxley has invented the term Agnostic... for those who limit the possibility of knowledge in certain fields. ...Professor E. du Bois-Reymond has raised the cry "Ignorabimus" ("We shall be ignorant") and... undertaken the difficult task of demonstrating that with regard to certain problems human knowledge is impossible. ...Now ...there is great danger in this cry. ...[T]he attempt to demonstrate an endless futurity of ignorance ...approaches despair. ...Evolution has taught us of the continual growth of man's intellectual powers."

"[M]ediaeval ...alchemy, astrology, witchcraft. ...Do we now know how the stars influence human lives or how witches turn milk blue? Not in the least. We have learnt to look upon the facts themselves as unreal, as vain imaginings of the untrained human mind; we have learnt that they could not be described scientifically because they involved notions which were in themselves contradictory and absurd. ...So soon as science entered the field of alchemy with a true classification and a true method, alchemy was converted into chemistry and became an important branch of human knowledge."

"Now it will, I think, be found that the fields of inquiry where science has not yet penetrated and where the scientist still confesses ignorance, are very like... alchemy astrology and witchcraft... Either they involve facts which are in themselves unreal—conceptions which are self-contradictory and absurd, and therefore incapable of analysis by the scientific or any other method,—or, on the other hand, our ignorance arises from an inadequate classification and a neglect of scientific method."

"[S]uppose that the Emperor Karl V. had said to the learned of his day: "I want a method by which I can send a message in a few seconds to that new world, which my mariners take weeks in reaching. ..." ...It required centuries spent in the discovery and classification of new facts before the Atlantic cable became a possibility. It may require the like or even a longer time to unriddle... psychical and biological enigmas... but he who declares that they can never be solved by the scientific method is... as rash as the man of the early sixteenth century would have been had he declared it utterly impossible that the problem of talking across the Atlantic Ocean should ever be solved."

"Although science claims the whole universe as its field... it confesses that its ignorance is more widely extended than its knowledge. In this very confession... it finds a safeguard for future progress. Science cannot... allow theologian or metaphysician... to the foreshore of our present ignorance, and so hinder the development in due time..."

"Each one of us is... called upon to give a judgment upon an immense variety of problems, crucial for our social existence. If that judgment confirms measures and conduct tending to the increased welfare of society, then it may be termed a moral, or, better, a social judgment. It follows, then, that to ensure a judgement's being moral, method and knowledge are essential to its formation. ...[T]he formation of a moral judgment—that is, one which the individual is reasonably certain will tend to social welfare—does not depend solely on the readiness to sacrifice individual gain or comfort, or on the impulse to act unselfishly: it depends in the first place on knowledge and method. The first demand of the state upon the individual is not for self-sacrifice but for self-development. ...[T]he man who gives a vote... in the choice of a representative, after forming a judgement based upon knowledge, is... acting socially, and is fulfilling a higher standard of citizenship."

"All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries."

"The single statement, the brief formula, the few words of which replace in our minds a wide range of relationships between isolated phenomena, is what we term a scientific law. Such a law, relieving our memory from the burden of individual sequences, enables us, with the minimum of intellectual fatigue, to grasp a vast complexity of natural or social phenomena. The discovery of law is... the peculiar function of the creative imagination. But this imagination has to be a disciplined one."

"[W]hen the law is reached... it must be tested and criticised by its discoverer in every conceivable way, till he is certain that the imagination has not played him false, and that his law is in real agreement with the whole group of phenomena..."

"Hundreds of men have allowed their imagination to solve the universe, but the men who have contributed to our real understanding of natural phenomena have been those who were unstinting in their application of criticism to the product of their imaginations. It is such criticism which is the essence of the scientific use of the imagination, which is... the very life-blood of science."

"Does not the beauty of the artist's work lie for us in the accuracy with which his symbols resume innumerable facts of our past emotional experience? ... [A]esthetic judgment... how exactly parallel it is to the scientific judgment."

"[W]e are frequently told that the growth of science is destroying the beauty and poetry of life. It is undoubtedly rendering many of the old interpretations of life meaningless, because it demonstrates that they are false to the facts which they profess to describe. It does not follow from this, however, that the aesthetic and scientific judgments are opposed; the fact is, that with the growth of our scientific knowledge the basis of the aesthetic judgment is changing and must change. There is more real beauty [satisfaction,.. permanent delight] in what science has to tell us of the chemistry of a distant star, or in the life history of a protozoon than in any produced by the creative imagination of a pre-scientific age."

"[T]he laws of science are products of the human mind rather than factors of the external world."

"[I]t is better to be content with the fraction of a right solution than to beguile ourselves with the whole of a wrong solution."

"Step by step [aesthetic] judgment, restless under the growth of positive knowledge, has discarded creed after creed and philosophic system after philosophic system."

"[O]nly little by little, slowly... man, by the aid of organised observation and careful reasoning, can hope to reach knowledge of the truth... science... is the sole gateway to a knowledge which can harmonise with our past as well as with our... future... As Clifford puts it, "Scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.""

"It was only the feeling that, at least in one or two aspects of Francis Galton's later life and of his scientific work, I could perhaps put his contributions to human knowledge more adequately than possibly one or another who might take up the task, if I resigned it, and who would hardly grasp the bearing of that long and intimate scientific correspondence between Galton, Weldon and myself, that I persevered in my endeavour to give some account of a life, wherein an important chapter of personal development must remain largely unrecorded."

"[I]t was soon clear to me that I was collecting as much information bearing on the family history of Charles Darwin as on that of Francis Galton. It seemed desirable to place the two men to some extent in contrast in my volume, showing in ancestry, in methods of work and in outlook on life what they had in common and how they differed."

"If my view be correct, Erasmus Darwin planted the seed of suggestion in questioning whether adaptation meant no more to man than illustration of creative ingenuity; the one grandson, Charles Darwin, collected the facts which had to be dealt with and linked them together by wide-reaching hypotheses; the other grandson, Francis Galton, provided the methods by which they could be tested..."

"Those who know the real history of the one occasion on which Galton and Darwin disagreed know how loyal Galton was to Darwin—loyal with a loyalty far rarer to-day. Galton would not have wished me to put him in the same rank as his master, but the reader who follows my story to the end may possibly see that the ramifications of Galton's methods are producing a renascence in innumerable branches of science..."

"[T]his work... is intended fundamentally as a permanent memorial to the Founder of the , and embraces material which may easily perish or be ultimately lost sight of. ...My object is... to issue a volume to some extent worthy of the name of the man it bears,—which may be studied hereafter by those who wish to understand him, his origin and his aims..."

"[T]his work is not written to gain a public, but piam memoriam prodere conditoris nostri and is intended especially for those who have known and loved Francis Galton in the past, or who may in the future desire to understand and honour him."

"The statistician Karl Pearson analyzed a large number of outcomes at certain roulette tables and suggested that the wheels were biased. He wrote in 1894: Clearly, since the Casino does not serve the valuable end of huge laboratory for the preparation of probability statistics, it has no scientific raison d’être... [E]arly experiments were suggestive and led to important discoveries in probability and statistics. They led Pearson to the ', which is of great importance in testing whether observed data fit a given ."

"Before meeting with Weldon... Pearson had grown into a social Darwinist anxious to provide his particular form of Darwinism with a proper scientific basis, and to show that Darwin's ideas and socialism were complementary, and not opposed, as had been maintained by several leading thinkers of the nineteenth century. Biometry offered him the chance of pursuing these ends. Moreover... Pearson's conception of 'properly scientific'... was one that made it probable that the development of biometry... would yield a harvest of statistical methods. Statistics, thus formed, embodied the central tenets of Pearson's philosophy of science, and, as such, was to be universally recommended."

"During the first two terms of 1881 he deputised for W. H. Drew, Professor of Mathematics at King's College, London, taking the senior mathematical teaching. It was in 1882... that he was engaged in his first considerable piece of mathematical work, according to his friend W. H. Macaulay "a theory of pulsating spheres in a fluid, forming an Atomic Theory,... a thing in spherical harmonics of the Clerk-Maxwell type." This work, or part of it, was probably not published till 1887. In 1883 two papers were printed "On the Motion of Spherical and Ellipsoidal Bodies in Fluid Media", and another "Note on Twists in an Infinite Elastic Solid". It was a natural step from such research to the completion of Clifford's Common Sense of the Exact Sciences and Todhunter's History of the Theory of Elasticity. We see from the subject-matter of these papers how Pearson's mind was already at work puzzling over the laws of the physical universe, which in terms of the Grammar of Science describe the "how" rather than the "why.""

"It was Karl Pearson, a man with an unquenchable ambition for scholarly recognition and the kind of drive and determination that had taken Hannibal over the Alps and Marco Polo to China, who recognized the power in Edgeworth's formulations of Galton's ideas. Pearson lacked Galton's originality and Edgeworth's depth of understanding, but it was his zeal, with a vital assist from G. Udny Yule, that created the methodology and sold it to the world."

"I wish I could communicate to you, and especially to those of you who are just now beginning your professional careers in a world of statistics incredibly more sophisticated than that of Karl Pearson's day, something of the thrill in meeting in person and studying under a man of Pearson's immense reputation. Author of the Grammar of Science, perfector of simple linear correlations; inventor of multiple and partial correlation, of curvilinear correlation, of tetrachoric and bi- serial correlation; discoverer of the \chi^2 function for summarizing multinomial data with magnificent simplicity; builder of a beautiful system of frequency curves derived from a single differential equation which in turn harked back to the hypergeometric series; founder of ' and author or co-author of a prolific literature applying these new statistics to biological and sociological data - Karl Pearson was a hero of to an American boy vouchsafed a visit to the home of the gods. Indeed, Pearson was Thor himself - for the thunderbolts with which he attacked unsparingly those who dared oppose him were echoing and reechoing."

"Professor Karl Pearson... devised the first test of nonrandomness (...in reality, deviation from normality ...for all intents and purposes, the same thing). He examined millions of runs of what was called a Monte Carlo (the old name for a roulette wheel) during... July 1902... He discovered... with a high degree of statistical significance... the runs were not purely random. ...Pearson was greatly surprised ...Philosophers of statistics call this the reference case problem to explain that there is no true attainable randomness in practice, only in theory."

"Even the fathers of statistical science forgot that a random series is bound to exhibit some pattern... Professor Pearson was among the first scholars interested in creating artificial random number generators, tables one could use as inputs for... simulations (precursors of our Monte Carlo simulator). ...[T]hey did not want these tables to exhibit... regularity. Yet real randomness does not look random!...A single random run is bound to exhibit some pattern ..."

"Suppose it is desired to test the efficiency of several treatments intended to destroy certain larvae on a field. The experiments are arranged in the usual way. The treatments compared are applied to particular plots with several replications and then the plots (or smaller parts of them) are inspected and all the surviving larvae are counted. Thus the observations represent the numbers of surviving larvae in several equal areas. It happens frequently that, while there is room for doubt as to whether there is any significant difference between the average number of survivors corresponding to particular treatments, there is no doubt whatever that the variablitity of the observations differs from treatment to treatment."

"The words "routine analyses" are used to denote the analyses performed by laboratories, frequently attached to industrial plants, and distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) All the analyses or measurements of the same kind, for example, are designed to measure the sugar content in beets or to determine the coordinates of a star. (2) The analyses are carried out day after day using the same methods and the same instruments. (3) While all the analyses are of the same kind, the quantity n varies from time to time, where n represents some small number, 2, 3, 4, 5."

"The future mathematical statistician needs early contacts with experimental sciences. He needs them because, at this stage of the development of statistics, the expeimental sciences are sources of theoretical problems. Also, he needs them because in almost any imaginable job which he may get after graduation, he will be called upon to apply his theory to experimental or observational problems."

"The development of modern science is marked by a pronounced tendency toward indeterminism. A somewhat brutal description of this tendency may be states as follows. In relation to some phenomena, instead of trying to establish a (deterministic) functional relationship between a variable y, and some other variables x1, x2, ... , xn, we try to build a (stochastic or probabilistic) model of these phenomena, predicting frequencies with which, in specified conditions, the same variable y will assume all of its possible values."

"The 40-day lockdown was further extended at a time of sporadic expressions of resistance and anger by migrant workers in a few cities. Extreme precarity doesn’t have a singular expression. While some are responding with anger, others are responding with resignation. The severe distress among is not entirely by chance. It has been marinating for a while but the epic new scale has been manufactured due to the unplanned and unilateral decision of a lockdown taken by the prime minister. The arbitrariness and unpreparedness are evident from the confusing messages from the central government concerning transport for migrants. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued an order on April 29 permitting inter-state travel for workers who want to return home and instructed the states to appoint nodal officers to develop (SOP). Thereafter the MHA issued another order on May 1 stating that “passenger movement by trains, except for security purposes or for purposes as permitted by MHA” was to be prohibited. This was followed by another order on May 3, which stated: “it is clarified that the MHA orders are meant to facilitate movement of stranded persons who had moved from their native places/ workplaces, just before the lockdown period…” Through these orders, the MHA has taken refuge in obfuscation. Notwithstanding the confusing orders, the constant shuffling of travel modes and costs further expose the central government’s lack of empathy, thought and planning. We present a highly generous estimate for the total travel cost by trains. If all of 6.5 inter-state migrants (Ravi Srivastava’s estimate of the number of migrants) were to return, and assuming an average ticket fare of Rs 650, the total travel cost comes to around Rs 4,200 crore. To put this number in perspective, the cost of the in Gujarat is reportedly Rs 3,000 crore. The PM-Cares as per news reports from early April had Rs 6,500 crore."

"The migrant worker distress has also exposed the inherent fractures of the “one nation” narrative that is one of the unique selling propositions of the BJP government. While it goes against the grain of the idea of India that has a rich tradition of pluralism, it is also meaningless from a governance standpoint. Migrant workers don’t carry their ration cards and so haven’t been able to avail of government rations in the states where they are stranded. The employers, s mostly, have largely abandoned them without paying them wages. Consequently, they are left to scrounge for food and are left without money. In many cases, they are stranded without knowing the local language. In this situation, it is the poorer state governments of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, etc. that have attempted to seek out “their people” stranded in richer states such as Maharashtra or Haryana and make cash transfers to their account. The economies of these richer states have benefited from the labour of migrants from the poorer states. However, the richer states have neither extended any financial support nor forced employers to pay wages to the workers."

"Worse still, on May 5, , , cancelled trains for migrant workers from Bengaluru to their home states. The decision was taken after a meeting between the chief minister and the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India (CREDAI). Neither migrant workers nor trade unions representing them were consulted. This was not only insensitive but a violation of the right to live with dignity (Article 21), right to freedom of movement (Article 19) and prohibition of forced labour (Article 23). The government decided to restore the train services only after protests."

"Barring examples from Kerala and , most host states have demonstrated disregard for migrant workers. It behooves the host states to care about the migrant workers not only from a humanitarian standpoint but also from the perspective of the health of the economy. On its part, the central government has maintained a calibrated silence regarding this. Monopolising decisions and socialising losses are not what federalism is supposed to mean. Therefore, it is time that the poorer states realise that the unilateral lockdown is not just an assault on the dignity of the poor, but also an economic assault on the poorer state governments. Further, there has been a concerted effort by the central government and some host states to hold the labour captive in the richer states by making transportation procedures unreasonable."

"Besides, do we need the veil of statistics to state the obvious? Don’t we already know that , , sex workers, the homeless, , and other such people live precarious lives without any safety nets? Let alone an economic lockdown, they lose access to daily wages if they fall sick for even a day. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, Do we need a weatherman to tell us which way the wind blows?"

"Anytime you do anything that has impact at all, you are not universally loved."

"We have experienced the impact of a national shutdown (due to COVID-19 pandemic) and we are certainly not keen to have to resort to that again. Therefore, our actions over this (2021 Christmas and 2022 New Year) festive season will determine what happens in our country in the next few weeks."

"My brother, the problem with you guys (lawyers) is that people pay you to create confusion. Those like me, statisticians, they pay us to find solutions."

"We are often the first root causes of such exclusion because we don’t have self-confidence. We have inner feelings pushing us not to expose ourselves wondering what people shall think about you. They will consider me arrogant, …And this restrains you from raising hand to express an idea."

"Women see more role models in local government, in business, and I hope in the not so distant future we shall see more women in executive roles.(Abagore babona icyitegererezo muri za Leta z'ibanze no mu bucuruzi, kandi nizeye ko mu gihe kitari cya kure tuzabona abagore benshi mu myanya yo hejuru y'ubuyobozi.)"

"When you have a face-to-face interview with them and they see that you are a normal woman, and that you do all these things, I think it really makes them believe that it is possible, because you don't need to have special knowledge, you just need to be committed, and to work with enthusiasm and be honest.(Iyo ugiranye ikiganiro cy’imbonankubone na bo bakabona ko uri umugore usanzwe, kandi ko ukora ibi bintu byose, ndatekereza ko rwose bibatera kwizera ko bigerwaho, birashoboka, kuko wowe ntukeneye kugira ubumenyi bwihariye, ugomba gusa kwiyemeza, no gukora umurimo ushishikaye kandi ukaba inyangamugayo)"

"I want to tell all young women who have ambitions that it is possible to become the CEO of the Bank of Kigali, to be a minister, to be a leader in any field. I want to tell them that it is possible, and I want to tell them that I am not unique, they can also be leaders.(Ndashaka kubwira abakobwa bose bakiri bato bafite ibyifuzo ko bishoboka kuba Umuyobozi Mukuru wa Banki ya Kigali, kuba minisitiri, kuba umuyobozi mu rwego urwo ari rwo rwose.Ndashaka kubabwira ko bishoboka, kandi ndashaka kubabwira ko ntari umwihariko, bashobora na bo kuba abayobozi.)"

"As a woman leader, I have to inspire the next generation of leaders.(Nk'umuyobozi w'umugore, mfite gutera imbaraga ikinyejana gikurikiyeho cy'abayobozi.)"

"Push your inner boundaries. It's good to have passion but hard work and persistence beats passion.(Shyira imbere ubushobozi bwawe bwose. Kugira ishyaka ni byiza, ariko gukora cyane no kudacika intege birusha ishyaka imbaraga.)"

"Bank of Kigali is the largest commercial bank in Rwanda. It’s growth over the last five decades is a story of resilience, hard work and strong partnerships based on Rwandan values.(Banki ya Kigali ni yo banki nini y'ubucuruzi mu Rwanda. Ukwaguka kwayo mu myaka mirongo itanu ishize ni inkuru y'ubudakemwa,umurava n'ubufatanye bukomeye bushingiye ku ndangagaciro z'Abanyarwanda.)"

"We want to understand the issues our clients are facing. This will help us to plan better to extend our financial services to more Rwandans but through the use of technology as our main focus of better service delivery in the coming year.(Turashaka kumenya ibibazo abakiliya bacu bahura na byo. Ibi bizadufasha gutegura neza uburyo bwo kugeza serivisi z'imari ku Banyarwanda benshi, dukoresheje ikoranabuhanga nk'inkingi y'ingenzi mu gutanga serivisi zinoze mu mwaka utaha.)"

"While skills are essential, as a Rwandan, I believe we can attest to the significant role leadership plays in empowering women to stay ready for an ever-evolving and dynamic work environment.(Nubwo ubumenyi ari ingenzi,nk'Umunyarwanda nemera ko dushobora kwemeza uruhare ruukomeye, ubuyobozi bugira mu guteza imbere abagore no kubafasha guhora biteguye guhangana n'ibihe bihindagurika ndetse n'akazi gahora gahinduka.)"

"Skills are important, but I think they are not the most important," Karusisi said, before adding that "we are not short of studies from very prestigious houses showing the importance and all the social, economic returns of investing into gender equality. All of that is there. It's out there on the internet and everyone can have access to that information.(Ubumenyi ni ingenzi, ariko sintekereza ko ari cyo kintu cy’ingenzi kurusha ibindi," Karusisi yavuze, yongeraho ati: "Nta kibazo dufite cy’uko nta bushakashatsi buhari; dufite ubushakashatsi bwinshi bwakozwe n’inzu zikomeye bugaragaza akamaro ko gushora mu buringanire bw’abagore n’abagabo, n’inyungu zabyo mu muryango ndetse no mu bukungu. Ibyo byose birahari, biri ku rubuga rw’iyakure kandi buri wese ashobora kubibona.)"

"It is what we have been able to do in Rwanda; implement, execute and put the women at the centre of everything we do. Skills are also important, it is not only about leadership."

"It revealed terrible architecture and very limited capabilities to deal with digital, skills gap. So the journey had to involve a lot of heavy lifting, because we are working on infrastructure, architecture, new systems and construction of a new data center,” Karusisi said with a personal example of having an expired BK credit card but without knowing."

"We have built our expertise and reputation, becoming the number one integrator of information technology solutions to our clients to provide a better and more seamless service for their teeming customers in the ever-evolving landscape of financial technology. Kigali is a key growth market and Inlaks is fully committed to working as a trusted partner with the bank now and into the future."

"When you see that the country has put you in power, you have to live in it. You have to contribute to building it.(Iyo ubona ko igihugu cyagushyizemo ubushobozi, nawe uba ugomba kucyitura.Ugomba gutanga umusanzu wawe mu kucyubaka)"

"When a person is involved in many things, in a vacuum, and neglects responsibility in things that are not important, it is a waste of time. Boys and girls who are confident, [based on] the confidence that the country has placed in them, and have the decency to follow what they want, I think they achieve a lot.(Iyo umuntu agiye mu bintu byinshi, mu kavuyo, agateshuka ku nshingano mu bintu bidafite akamaro, ni ukwipfusha ubusa. Abahungu, abakobwa bigiriye icyizere, [bashingiye] ku cyizere igihugu cyabashyizemo, bakagira n’ikinyabupfura cyo gukurikira icyo bashaka, nibaza ko bagera kuri byinshi)"

"Most of the risk goes to girls but they don't get pregnant on their own […] those people who get pregnant should also be affected and recognized. The unfaithful person must also be affected. It is a very sad thing.(Ingaruka nyinshi zijya ku bakobwa ariko ntabwo baba biteye inda bonyine […] abo bantu babatera inda na bo bagombye kugerwaho n’ingaruka kandi bikamenyekana. Umuntu uhemuka agomba kugirwaho ingaruka na we. Ni ikintu kibabaje cyane)"

"The thing that teaches me the most is everyday life in Rwanda...watching how Rwandans compete and value each other in order to continue progressing, is something that gives me confidence that our children will live in a more developed Rwanda than it is now.(Ikintu kinyigisha cyane ni ubuzima bwa buri munsi mu Rwanda…kureba ukuntu Abanyarwanda bahatana, bakiha agaciro kugira ngo bakomeze batere imbere, ni ibintu bimpa icyizere cy’uko abana bacu bazabaho mu Rwanda ruteye imbere kurusha aho rugeze ubu.)"

"When I am free I spend time with my children. I don't have a lot of free time but when I do, I'm with my family and kids, that's what gives me energy for the next day when I go to work.(Iyo naruhutse ngirana umwanya n’abana. Ntabwo ngira umwanya mwinshi ariko iyo nawubonye, mba ndi kumwe n’umuryango ndetse n’abana, ni byo numva bimpa imbaraga ku munsi ukurikira iyo ngiye ku kazi.)"

"As we are on the same journey, you will not hesitate to ask us and we are ready to help you with your needs. What we want is cooperation.(Ubwo turi mu rugendo rumwe ntacyo mwatwima kandi natwe twiteguye kubafasha mu byifuzo byanyu.Icyo twifuza ni ubufatanye.)"

"We wanted to cooperate with Miss Rwanda because we think it's a good thing, you as girls, I think that at 19, there are maybe about a million girls out here in Rwanda, maybe even outside of Rwanda, they look at you, they see that you are beautiful, but they see that you have opinions. good nation building. That's why we want to partner with you because we know there are a lot of people out there who are watching.(Twashatse gufatanya na Miss Rwanda kuko tubona ko ari igikorwa cyiza, mwebwe nk’abakobwa nibaza ko muri 19, hari abakobwa wenda bagera kuri miliyoni hanze aha mu Rwanda wenda no hanze y’u Rwanda babareberaho, babona ko muri beza, ariko babona ko munafite ibitekerezo byiza byubaka igihugu. Nicyo gituma natwe dushaka gufatanya namwe kuko tuzi ko hari abantu benshi bari hanze aha babareberaho.)"

"We are working with Miss Rwanda to sponsor a project that will appear more innovative than others. Another thing we are working with Miss Rwanda is to support a project that will appear to have a new one. We as BK believe that the development of our country will be done by people.(Dukorana na Miss Rwanda mu gutera inkunga umushinga uzagaragara ko ufite agashya kurusha iyindi.Ikindi dukorana na Miss Rwanda ni ugutera inkunga umushinga uzagaragara ko ufite agashya.Twebwe nka BK twemera ko kugira ngo igihugu cyacu gitere imbere bizakorwa n’abantu.)"

"We've seen in the past a lot of people bring solutions out there, but they don't really answer the problems in our company. I believe that style is very important. What we are looking at is a project that solves the problems, but it fits well with the concerns of the Rwandan community. It's a must-have project that solves a problem quickly and affordably.(Twabonye mu bihe byashize abantu benshi bazana ibisubizo hanze, ariko bidasubiza neza ibibazo biri muri sosiyete yacu.Nizera ko imiterere ari ngombwa cyane.Icyo tureba ni umushinga ukemura ibibazo ariko bihuye neza n’ibireba umuryango nyarwanda.Ni umushinga ugomba kuba ufite ikibazo ucyemura mu buryo bwihuse kandi buhendutse.)"

"We want to simplify things but also in a way that is affordable for everyone, and while we are able to offer our services to more people efficiently because people do not have to come to the branches I think that is a win for us and for the customers, we are able to reduce the costs of operations in our business all of them.(Turashaka koroshya ibintu ariko na none mu buryo buhendukiye buri wese, kandi mu gihe dushoboye gutanga serivisi zacu ku bantu benshi neza kubera ko abantu batagomba kuza ku mashami nibaza ko ari intsinzi kuri twe no ku bakiriya, turi gushobora kugabanya ibiciro by'ibikorwa mu bucuruzi bwacubwose.)"

"Leadership is key to women capital development."

"Skills are important, but as a Rwandan, i think we can testify about the importance and power of leadership in empowering women to be continually prepared for an increasingly changing and dynamic work environment."

"It is what we have been able to do in Rwanda; implement, execute and put women at the center of everything we do."

"Skills are also important, it is not only about leadership."

"It is innovation that fuels business growth, and keeps the global economy on the move."

"I recognise the importance of investing in women entrepreneurs as a smart business move."

"I am both encouraged and challenged by the resilience and determination of women entrepreneurs in a male dominated world."

"Investing in women entrepreneurs is not just a moral imperative; it is a smart business strategy that unlocks untapped potential and drives progress across the society."

"I never expected to experience the embarrassement of a failed transaction on my own card. But there i was, unable to withdraw cash from an ATM machine because my card had expired."

"The banking conveniences that customers take for granted today were not possible a decade ago, but they have become an essential part of our daily lives."

"Our young people today are luckier (you know) than we've been (you know) we many of the people in my generation was born as refugees. Today, we have a country our young people have an opportunity to thrive and they're given so many opportunities education, access to even informal education, etc. I think we need people to be ambitious, to want more for themselves as people, more for their communities and more for the country because when you're not ambitious you can have all the education you have (you know) nothing will happen much."

"We need people to be ambitious to be to go out of the comfort zone and start businesses and try to grow in whatever they're doing, so they can have more impact for themselves but also on the communities."

"This championship is more than a race; it’s a moment where Rwanda’s spirit and Africa’s resilience take the spotlight. Hosting the UCI Road World Championships here shows how far we’ve come, both as a nation and a continent, in shaping our own stories on the world stage."

"Through our investments in BK Arena, BAL, and now the UCI Road World Championships, we’re contributing to Rwanda’s growing reputation as a hub for talent and international events.She added that the bank sees this kind of support as a long-term investment in the future of Rwanda."

"Bank of Kigali CEO Diane Karusisi took part in a major moment at the UCI Road World Championships 2025 by awarding the winner of the men's Junior Individual Time Trial U23 by The New Times.Tuesday,September 23,2025."

"These numbers only tell part of the story. What excites us most is the impact behind those numbers. Our commitment is to keep building a bank that grows together with Rwanda."

"Dr Diane Karusisi, CEO of Bank of Kigali and BK Group boss Uzziel Ndagijimana during the presentation of the resultsThe New Times,August 29,2025."

"We will be reporting the loans given by the bank and their results on livelihoods, jobs, and exports. As part of our Sustainability Report, we also show how the business we do is promoting better gender balance and equity."

"It melts my heart to be here. I see great people;great leaders; I see the future for Bank of Kigali. Our challenge now is to keep you inspired, dreamming, creating, and developing because that is how we can shape the future."

"BK Academy: Building Rwanda’s Future Financial Human Capital;CEO Diane Karusisi.October 20,2023.https://www.ktpress.rw/2023/10/bk-academy-building-rwandas-future-financial-human-capital-ceo-diane-karusisi"

"Breastfeeding is nurturing life. At BK, we aspire to lead the way in fostering an inclusive environment for our employees."

"Bank of Kigali elevates workplace inclusivity with launch of ‘Mother’s Room’Africa Press-Rwanda.2023-10-15."

"It has been a journey marked by the pursuit of gender equality, and today marks just one of the many milestones along this path. Moving forward, as we renovate our branches, we are committed to ensuring that every branch includes a mother’s room."

"Bank of Kigali elevates workplace inclusivity with launch of ‘Mother’s Room’"

"Leading means rallying people around a vision, clarity of visions it needs to be crystal clear, you need to be consistent the world has so many distractions. Stick to your vision and make sure people understand it.(Kuyobora bisobanura guhuriza abantu ku cyerekezo kimwe. Icyo cyerekezo kigomba kuba kigaragara neza, gisobanutse. Ugomba kugumana umurongo umwe kuko isi yuzuyemo ibintu byinshi bitatanya abantu. Hagarara ku cyerekezo cyawe, kandi umenye ko abantu bakizi kandi bagisobanukiwe.)"

"I believe we have a very strong government. I believe that we have historic opportunity as Rwandans. A lot of great things are happening here;showing that it’s possible to transform Africa into a better place for Africans.(Nizeye ko dufite ubuyobozi bukomeye cyane. Nizeye ko dufite amahirwe y’ amateka nk’Abanyarwanda. Hari ibintu byinshi byiza biri kubera hano bigaragaza ko bishoboka guhindura Afurika ahantu heza kurusha ho ku Banyafurika.)"

"When you are not ambitious, you can have all the education you want, but nothing much will happen.(Ubaye udafite inyota yo kugera kure, ushobora kugira amashuri menshi ushaka, ariko nta kintu kinini kizagerwaho.)"

"Get out of your comfort, try to grow in whatever you are doing so you can have more impact for yourself and also for your communities.(Sohoka mu buzima bworoshye usanzwe umenyereye, gerageza gukura no gutera imbere mu byo ukora kugira ngo ugire uruhare runini ku buzima bwawe no ku iterambere ry’aho utuye.)"

"Our gesture today intends to remind you that we are there, and we really care because we are concerned with your situation after the Genocide.(Igikorwa twakoze uyu munsi kigamije kubibutsa ko turi kumwe namwe, kandi tubitayeho kuko dufite impuhwe n’uruhare mu gukemura bibazo mwahuye nabyo nyuma ya Jenoside.)"

"Religion and philosophy have been the great contributions of India to the world."

"The grammar of Panini stands supreme among the grammars of the world, alike for its precision of statement, and for its thorough analysis of the roots of the language and of the formative principles of words. By employing an algebraic terminology it attains a sharp succinctness unrivalled in brevity, but at times enigmatical. It arranges, in logical harmony, the whole phenomena, which the Sanskrit language presents, and stands forth as one of the most splendid achievements of human invention and industry. So elaborate is the structure that doubts have arisen whether its complex rules offormation and phonetic change, its polysyllabic derivatives, its ten conjugations with1heir multiform aorists and long array of tenses, could ever have been the spoken language of a people." 29"

"The Hindus attained a very high proficiency in arithmetic and algebra independently of any foreign influence." The romance of the composition of Lilavati - the standard Hindu textbook on Arithmetic by Bhaskaracharya - is very interesting and charming. It deals not only with the basic elements of the science of arithmetic but also with questions of interest, of barter, ofpermutatlOns and combinations, and of mensuration. Bhaskaracharya knew the law of gravitation. The Surya Siddhanta is based on a system of trigonometry. Professor Wallace says: "In fact it is founded on a geometrical theorem, which was not known to the geometricians of Europe before the time of Vieta, about two hundred years ago. And it employs the sine of arcs, a thing unknown to the Greeks." The 47th proposition of Book I of Euclid, which is ascribed to Pythagoras was known long ago to the Hindus and must have been learnt from them by Pythagoras."

"The whole conception of Islam is that of a church either actively militant or conclusively triumphant forcibly converting the world, or ruling the stiff-necked unbeliever with a rod of iron."

"Upon our annexation of the Punjab the fanatic fury, which had formerly spent itself upon the Sikhs, was transferred to their successors. Hindus and English were alike infidels in the eyes of the Sittana Host, and as such were to be exterminated by the sword. The disorders as ‘ which we had connived at, or at least viewed with indifference, upon the Sikh frontier, now descended as a bitter inheritance to ourselves, Their followers were found preaching sedition in different parts of the country so far apart as Rajshahiin Bengal, Patna in Bihar and the Punjab frontier. Throughout the whole period the fanatics kept the border tribes in a state of chronic hostility to the British Power."

"Scholarship is warmed with the holy flame of Christian zeal."

"To the aboriginal races alone can we appear in the light of friends and deliverers. They have yet to start on the path of progress. It remains for us to decide whether that path is to lead them to Hinduism, or to the purer faith and civilisation which we represent."

"‘In ancient times the lower portion of the river seems to have borne the name of its confluent the Saraswati or Sarsuti, which joins the main stream in Patiala territory. It then possessed the dimensions of an important channel . . . At present, however, every village through which the stream passes has diverted a portion of its waters for irrigation, no less than 10,000 acres being supplied from this source in Ambala District alone . . . During the lower portion of its course, in Sirsa District, the bed of the Ghaggar is dry from November to June, affording a cultivable surface for rich crops of rice and wheat.’"

"... the entry ‘Saraswati (Sarsuti)’, defined as a ‘sacred river of the Punjab, famous in the early Brahmanical annals’. We learn that the river rises ‘in the low hills of Sirmur State, emerges upon the plain at Zadh Budri [Ad Badri], a place esteemed sacred by all Hindus’, and, before joining the Ghaggar, ‘passes by the holy town of Thanesar and the numerous shrines of the Kuruksetra, a tract celebrated as a centre of pilgrimages, and as the scene of the battle-fields of the Mahabharatha’. The Gazetteer repeats, ‘In ancient times, the united stream below the point of junction appears to have borne the name of Sarsuti, and, undiminished by irrigation near the hills, to have flowed across the Rajputana plains . . .’ ‘Some of the earliest Aryan settlements in India were on the banks of the Saraswati, and the surrounding country has from almost Vedic times been held in high veneration. The Hindus identify the river with Saraswati, the Sanskrit Goddess of Speech and Learning.’"

"‘In the year A.D. 1000 it [the Sutlej] was a tributary of the Hakra, and flowed in the Eastern Nara . . . Thus the Sutlej or the Hakra—for both streams flowed in the same bed—is probably the lost river of the Indian desert, whose waters made the sands of Bikaner and Sind a smiling garden.’"

"This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly."

"‘The change did not come about without obstruction from the representatives of custom thought. An edict of A.D. 1259 forbade the bankers of Florence to use the infidel symbols, and the ecclesiastical authorities of the University of Padua in A.D. 1348 ordered that the price list of books should be prepared not in “ciphers”, but in plain letters.’"

"All the algorithms for fractions now used were invented by the Hindus. The Greek treatment of fractions never advanced beyond the level of the Egyptian Rhind papyrus. […] This inability to treat a fraction as a number on its own merits is the explanation of a practice [which] was as useless as it was ambiguous. […] When we remember that the Greeks and Alexandrians continued this extraordinary performance, there is nothing remarkable about the small progress which they achieved in their arithmetic. What is remarkable is that a few of them like Archimedes should have discovered anything at all about series of numbers involving fractional quantities."

"The difficulty of understanding why it should have been the Hindus who took this step, why it was not taken by the mathematicians of antiquity, why it should first have been taken by practical man, is only insuperable if we seek for the explanation of intellectual progress in the genius of a few gifted individuals, instead of in the whole social framework of custom thought which circumscribes the greatest individual genius. What happened in India about AD 100 had happened before. May be it is happening now in Soviet Russia…. To accept it (this truth) is to recognise that every culture contains within itself its own doom, unless it pays as much attention to the education of the mass of mankind as to the education of the exceptionally gifted people.’"

"In the whole history of Mathematics, there has been no more revolutionary step than the one which the Indian made when they invented the sign ‘0’ for the empty column of the counting frame."

"Non-food inflation rate of 24.1 percent is about four times as high as the food inflation rate of 5.8 percent."

"The country’s unadjusted GDP growth decelerated to 5.3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, sharply down from a revised 10.8 percent in the same period last year."

"But despite contraction in several sectors, some as a result of the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the 2014 growth forecast, while down on 2013, still puts Ghana well above the IMF forecast for sub-Saharan African growth of 5.1 percent. Ghana, which exports gold, oil and cocoa, has been hard hit in the hospitality sector."

"Rural men and women lack decent work opportunities. Women in particular face greater difficulties in transforming their labour into more productive employment activities and their paid work into higher and more secured incomes."

"She said inadequate data on gender sensitive indicators had been a serious impediment to understanding the phenomenon, making informed policy decisions which would necessitate the drive to improve statistical systems and ensure the full mainstreaming of gender into data production, analysis and dissemination."

"Efforts to promote gender equity in labour markets and income generating activities as well as the support for decent employment initiatives in rural areas were hampered by the lack of comprehensive information on the multiple dimensions of social and gender inequalities."

"There was the need to introduce innovative programmes that would focus on rural areas and farming communities for the rural folks to get access to credit and savings, affordable public and private mechanisms which could provide access to land, markets, seeds, fertilisers and machinery."

"I urge policy makers to recognise women’s high participation in non-agricultural self-employment activities as an opportunity to increase rural employment and access to economic resources in strengthening a collective action especially within women groups."

"When Kenya’s history is fully documented and shared between the people, we will be surprised at how similar were the risks we all took in various parts of the country to liberate ourselves from the colonial yoke."

"Both of us were children of resisters, human rights defenders and change makers."

"Mĩcere demonstrated that Black African girls were capable of learning, taking leadership and winning in a multiracial setting."

"We both saw a sista in one another and from there we have shared much in our careers of knowledge building and teaching, and in our acts of rebellion against all forms of oppression."

"I do math and statistics. That's what I do, so I come at the whole business of turning numbers into stories. ...How can we turn numbers into stories?"

"What we use in the book... are ways which we think might... provide gripping narratives, and yet provide a realistic way of communicating small risks..."

"If you go to the English Parachuting Association web site... you find this lovely Excel spreadsheet which has got all the deaths... [F]or the last 20 years, 4.6 million jumps, 48 deaths... or 10 in a million. On average, with going up in a plane... I thought there's around 7 or 10 in a million chances of me dying. There's 50 million people in England and Wales... Every day 50 of them have accidental or violent deaths... not to do with their health. So a couple are murdered a day, a few are run over, some people fall off ladders, etc... So that's 1 in a million... Our daily dose of acute risk is a [a 1 in a million chance of dying]. So jumping out of a plane is only about a week's worth. ...[I]n terms of overall mortality... at my age, 59, it's 7,000 micromorts a year in terms of my chances of dying. So an extra 7 or 10 on top of that... [I]t's worthwhile doing... it once....So I did it [parachuted], and I survived."

"The point is... that you can make these comparisons quite easy... is... 8 [micromorts], running a marathon is... 7, ... 5, 's going to be 400..."

"So... in the book we make all these comparisons... That's acute timing risk, things that are going to kill you on the spot. ...What about the other sort of risks? ...You can have your spam ...[T]hat is not going to kill you on the spot. Well, it might. ...You might choke on...[it]... but it's... unlikely..."

"So it's a different sort of risk. These are chronic risks. ...[T]hings that... if you carry on with them, are likely to shorten your life. So how can we express these... [T]hese are the ones that newspapers tend to get terribly wrong."

"This is called a hazard curve. ...This is the chance of dying before your next birthday, on average. ...[I]t's... on a , so 10%... (1 in 10) 83 year olds will not see 84... 1 in 100 people like me [age 59] will not see their next birthday. 1 in 1,000 thirty-two year olds, and 1 in 10,000 7 year olds... and there is a... lump, sadly jumping up at 17, as you can imagine... boys... a risk-taking lump, but if you ignore that lump... it's a... straight line between... 7 and 90."

"This was discovered by Gompertz in 1825. There's something about our bodies, the way that we age, that means that every year our chance of dying increases by the same amount, 9%."

"When epidemiologists... do studies, when they follow lots of people for years, they measure the effects of various habits, in terms of s. This is what it does to your hazard every year. So if you have a daily sausage or a bacon sandwich, this goes up by about 10%, a fixed amount... as your... annual risk. 10% increase in your annual risk of death, of not making it to your next birthday."

"These s that epidemiologists report, as Michael has so ably shown, tend to get... badly reported in the newspapers. So this... in the '... "Less Meat, More Veg is the Secret for Longer Life" which... probably could well be the case, but the way they report it... They said that if we cut down the amount of red meat... 10% of all deaths would be avoided. ...So 10% of us will live forever eating nuts. This is not true. ...[T]hey're talking about relative risk, but they don't understand."

"So we've been trying to think of another metaphor... and the one we caught hold of is... speed of aging. So it's turning these numbers, rather bold numbers quite difficult to understand, into stories, and the story we've got is, "Getting older quicker" or "Aging Slower"..."

"Gompertz's observation said that between the ages of 25 and 80, your risk of dying increases by about 9% per year. ...[T]hat means that every eight years your risk of dying doubles, essentially. ...[I]t's going to get you in the end. Mathematics proves it. You can't go on forever, because it's this exponential increase in the risk. Amazing, really powerful. That's why you peg out in the end. It's going to get you."

"That change in life expectancy is not that gripping in itself. So what we've done in the book, it does seem a rather a strange thing to say... "Over an adult lifetime, about... 50-60 years... take a year off your life." It's like losing roughly 1/50 of your life. It's actually ' because of... these daily habits... like losing a week every year of your life, the same as losing 1/2 hour off a day. So we could say... that... 2 hours watching television... it's as if it's taking 1/2 hour... off your life. ...You're aging an extra 1/2 hour sitting on your backside watching television ..."

"There'a a nice thing about 1/2 hour because an adult life expectancy is 55 to 60 years... is actually a million 1/2 hours. A million 1/2 hours is 57 years. So you have got, not all of you... some of you have got a million 1/2 hours to fritter away."

"Life-expectancy reduced by 1 year = about 30 minutes off your life expectancy for each day with the habit = 1"

"One of the other things we do in the book is talk about radiation... [Y]ou can say exposure to radiation, you can talk in terms of micro-lives or cigarette equivalents. So... a flight to New York, the radiation you get from that is equivalent to smoking a couple of cigarettes, about 1/2 hour of your life... The whole body CT scan... exposing yourself... to possibly an unhealthy dose of radiation... 150 microlives, smoking about 300 cigarettes, about the same as standing about 1 1/2 miles from the Hiroshima explosion. ...[W]hen they advertise these things for a thousand quid, they don't tell you that."

"[W]e can compare hang gliding... taking heroin... health treatments, with standing next to Hiroshima. We're deliberately... using these numbers to tell uncomfortable stories."

"Probability was only invented a few hundred years ago. It's not a natural way to think at all. It's extremely difficult and complex. Anything that can help people do it, is of benefit."

"Psychologists got hold of this lovely idea of why we're trying to do it. I don't care what people do, so I'm not trying to change what they do, particularly. ...It would be nice if they could remember it... get the gist of something... learn something, but I don't even care too much about that. Psychologists have got this great scheme of what, perhaps, we're really trying to do, which is trying to breed some immunity to misleading anecdote, which is... the fact that we're so influenced by idiotic stories we hear on the web, or from our friends and neighbors."

"Misleading anecdote is someone smokes 20 a day and lives to 110, [or] who buys some tablets off the web and their cancer goes away... These are not representative... stories... [T]his is an active area of research, and it's been shown that if you present information in the way that Michael was presenting, as icon arrays, show both the good and the bad, show the totality, [it's been] shown empirically that you can make people less influenced by misleading anecdotes."

"There is a way... which comes from economics and social science. It was developed by... Frank Knight, and Keynes used this... The distinction between risk and uncertainty... [R]isk is about things... we... understand... known unknowns, to use Donald Rumsfeld's... great phrase... [something] we can put numbers on, things within... circumscribed situations... A lot of medicine is like this... repetition, a lot of data. ...[I]nsurance is like this ...We know roughly what the chances are, and we can talk about the numbers. Uncertainty is when... we don't know the numbers, or... deeper... we don't even know... the problem... the options... the possible outcomes..."

"[W]e tend to think... of something that's going to happen... soon, or is well understood as risk, but if we're talking about what will happen in the world in ten years time. Who's going to start putting chances on this. You'd be... deluded... There's much... deeper uncertainty or... radical uncertainty..."

"This current COVID-19 virus... is a classic situation... of... an uncertainty problem, rather than a risk problem because we... don't know the parameters. We don't know... how it might spread in Great Britain. We don't know the effectiveness of the interventions that are going to be made. So... when you're making projections... over the next 6 months, there's a massive range of possibilities, up to 1/2 million deaths... from about 5... the most optimistic... [A]ny quantification, giving any probabilities would be... very ambitious..."

"[S]easonal flu—average year—kills 6,000 people in this country. Mainly old... vulnerable... frail...[etc.] So we are hit by this, year after year... epidemics... we've got to put this into perspective... [T]o an extent it is a trade-off between massive disruption... [I]f you say everyone has to stay in their home for 4 weeks... that's not just economic loss. It has a massive... health... [detriment] in terms of... mentality and fitness. Norsemen of harm will be done... so it's not just a matter of... "Minimize the number of deaths.""

"We know from studying and going... back to Geoffrey Rose's idea that the biggest impact on public health... is not by picking out the real high-risk people and maybe stopping them drinking. It's by reducing the exposure of the vast mass of people at intermediate risk. So... the biggest impact on public health would be if everybody drank a little bit less... But the problem... is the Rose paradox... the very people you want to change the behavior [of] are the ones who don't see why they should change their behavior, because the impact is minimal. They won't notice the benefits. You're asking them to give up something they enjoy for the benefit... they will... never notice... [I]t's only noticeable when... multiplied... ten million times./* Understanding Risk (Mar 24, 2020) */Ref: "a large number of people at a small risk may give rise to more cases of disease than the small number who are at"

"When it comes to vaccines and infectious diseases, nobody is an individual... [With] [i]nfectious diseases... measles when it comes to vaccine decisions, or COVID-19 when it comes to taking precautions, we're not individuals. We are members of society, and there's no... "optimize your individual situation." You have... an absolute responsibility... to protect the people around you, particularly the vulnerable... [T]hat's why... people who avoid vaccinating their kids is outrageous and irresponsible... they are endangering weaker kids who might not be able to have the vaccines because their immune system is compromised or for some [other] reason... [S]imilarly, if young... healthy people... not... harmed by the virus, go around being irresponsible, they are endangering the lives of older people surrounding them, in particular, their own family."

"When it comes to trying to prevent you endangering other people, I don't see anything wrong with persuasion. ...[Y]ou shouldn't be... [endangering people] and you should be trying to be persuaded, if not forced... I get quite Stalinist on these things because... it's so irresponsible for some people to endanger the health of others. If they wanted to make their own decision that only affects them, it's very different, and I wouldn't want to persuade anyone..."

"[I]n medicine... ... not manipulation or coercion, is when... as a doctor or... authority, you genuinely believe that this action is in the person's best interests, but they don't... want to do it. ...How do you make that an ethical persuasion? It's based on... two things, first... respecting the autonomy of the individuals, that they can refuse... no matter what, respect their ability to choose... the other thing is your authenticity, your integrity, that... you are doing this on behalf of that individual, for their best interest; not... to keep your clinic numbers up or to stop this person being a nuisance...[etc.]"

"Communication is not a one-way process. It's not just telling people things. ...[T]he first rule of communication is to shut-up and... just listen... and good doctors will do that. ...Good doctors will listen and explore the person's values and concerns, and... explore to what extent... that person want[s] to be guided... to be told what to do... and that's... appropriate to want... guidance from a trusted source. ...And ...make sure ...before ...that stage, you have ...genuinely laid out the options in a way that gives it balance. You haven't tried to manipulate them... into a particular direction. ...Very difficult ...but ...a worthy objective, and... having done that, it's perfectly reasonable to... then, give advice."

"The worst... medical care would be just say, "Oh well, it's completely up to you. I'm not going to give you any advice." Well... you're the guy who knows... [the] supposed... expert. ...I want your advice. ...[T]his is an invaluable process which I hope all medical students have been taught. How to engage... It's not . ...Paternalism is ...immediately saying, "...I think you should do this," without really allowing that person a full autonomy to choose."

"[s] don't have to get into fantastically complicated statistics. ...It's all just to do with proportions, that's all! It's not a skill. Well, it is a skill in how to tell a story. ...[C]linicians now—we've got some online courses that do this—can learn to do it... Getting a rough idea of magnitudes is very important, and... to avoid words like "chances" and... I'm not even that keen on "s." So I'd much rather say... Experience shows that out of 100 people who match you in these characteristics—They're not you, but would be matching—This is what we would expect to happen, about 60 of them would survive this and... 30 blah, blah, blah... Just as a descriptor, and you could draw a little picture...[etc.] So we've got these possibilities. ...We don't know which one of these you'll be, and then it's very reasonable to tune it: but in your circumstances we... think you're better... other factors... put your chances a little higher... but we can't guarantee it either way."

"We spent ages... working... for child heart surgery... such a delicate area, trying to find the wording for... random error or binomial variability... [Y]ou can give a percentage... 95% . Well, am I going to be one of the 5% or one of the 95%? We don't know. It's just chance or luck, fortune. We can't... use those words in... delicate situations... operating on children... Then we came up with a good phrase... which we used and tested on parents... It's "unforeseeable factors," not "unforeseen factors," because that would suggest someone's to blame... [T]he unforeseeable factors could lead some people to... not survive the operation, and some to survive. So... we can put you in a group, but we can't go beyond that... [O]nly what develops over time, in terms of complications, or something like that, could... put... you in one group or another. "Unforeseeable factors," I really like that phrase. I try to use it all the time, I recommend it."

"s are disastrous. ...Relative risks are deeply misleading. They're a manipulative form of communication. To ever say, "Oh, this doubles your risk, or increases your risk 50%," absolute No-no! They are hopeless. In some situations they can be very valuable... but in general, medical things what... should be always given... s... with and without something... Like my s... I was getting... 15%, 10 year risk: 15 out 100 people like me might expect to have a heart attack or stroke. So I... roughly halved it... only in terms of relative risk... from 15% to 7-8%. ...Being told it halved it does sound good, but if wasn't a very big number in the first place, halving it is of no interest... especially if the thing's going to give me some side-effects... if it did, it would be completely pointless... [Y]ou cannot know... whether you should do something... [Y]ou cannot trade off the benefits... [and] the harms from a medical treatment without knowing the absolute risk. You cannot do it in any rational way whatsoever. ...A lot of the communication now is using absolute risk, which is a huge improvement."

"s are very valuable in... low probability, high impact events. Every time you cross the road there is a low probability and high impact that you're going to get run over. ...You take extra precautions to reduce... very small risk to... even smaller. ...[O]n an absolute risk scale, you [might] say, "Oh, I'm not going to bother... It's not worth doing..." but... by making that low risk even smaller, it's... valid... [P]eople discovered this... doing earthquake predictions... [T]he absolute risk... it's always low. They're very unpredictable... but telling people it's 10 times normal, or 100 times normal, people will act... appropriately. ...They won't panic. They won't rush away. ...[I]n Italy ...they ...sleep outside for a bit. ...So in certain circumstances relative risk can be very valuable... [U]sing both in... situations... with very small risks.., where... consequences are... severe... [and] the cost of the intervention, the action, is... minimal. Taking a bit more precautions, being a bit more careful... not putting a big investment into making a very small risk even smaller.... not walking under ladders... a low-cost change in your behavior to make a small risk even smaller... [A]bsolute risks really don't deal well with that, because you're talking 0.000..."

"We find it very difficult to deal with... low numbers, one in a million, one in a billion... Once I have to start counting the zeros, all intuition and feeling goes. So it's hopeless, and of course we're bad at it. Why should we be good at doing that sort of thing? ...[I]t's more and more reported that people will use this expected frequency format, where instead of talking about... .03 per person year... What does that mean, for heaven's sakes. It's absolutely ridiculous scientific language for something. No, what you say is, out of 100 people... we would expect 3 for this to happen each year. ...You talk about a specific group of people, which you can... draw a... picture of... and that helps enormously. You... want to bring things to... whole numbers, small numbers, preferably between 1 and 100, or between 1 and 50... magnitudes that people have got a feeling for, and... no decimal places, no multiple zeros. You've got to get rid of all of that. You've got to get things to units people can understand, preferably on a scale of 1 to 10."

"Framing is absolutely vital. ...All the work in communications is driven by the work of psychologists like Kahneman, Tversky...[etc.] The simplest one... is not always to talk about s, but to talk about s, and preferably... to give both. Our predict systems are almost always... positively framed, all in terms of survival. So we draw survival curves, not mortality curves... How long can you be without this condition. ...In a way you should give both, but ...it makes a big difference ...whether you talk about 2% mortality or 98% survival. ...2% mortality sounds rather terrifying while 98% survival sounds rather good, and we don't want to unnecessarily upset people... [W]e are all going to die ...It's 100% mortality in the end, but you want to show a decline in survival ...because it's just fairer and more likely to get people engaged rather than frighten them off immediately. ...[W]hen we ...provide an icon array that shows everybody, it shows the deaths ...patients like it. ...They like seeing out of 100 people ...in 10 years time, how many people are going to be alive ...because they have the chemotherapy now, or dead because of breast cancer...[etc.]"

"We need to think slow instead of fast, and resist drawing causal links between events where none may exist."

"It’s a common human tendency to attribute a causal effect between different events, even when there isn’t one present..."

"[S]omeone is diagnosed with autism after receiving the , so people assume a causal connection – even when there isn’t one."

"[W]hen... there have been 30 "thromboembolic events" after around 5m vaccinations, the crucial question... is: how many would be expected anyway, in the normal run..?"

"(DVTs) [normally] happen to around one person per 1,000 each year... out of 5 million people getting vaccinated, we would expect... 5,000 DVTs a year, or... 100 every week. So it is not at all surprising that there have been 30 reports."

"In the trials that led to the vaccines... adverse events were reported by 38% of those receiving the real vaccine... 28% of those who received the control [dummy, or fake vaccine, of which some were meningitis vaccine] also reported a side-effect. ...[F]ewer than 1% reported a serious adverse event, and of these... slightly more had received the dummy than the active vaccine. ...So there was no evidence of increased risk ..."

"In the UK, adverse reactions are reported using the “yellow card”... Up to 28 February, around 54,000 yellow cards have been reported... from... 10 million vaccinations... three to six reports per 1,000 jabs [0.3-0.6%]. That means a far greater number of side-effects are reported in the trials..."

"The most serious problem is anaphylactic reactions, and the advice is not to inject anyone with a previous history of allergic reactions to either a prior [vaccine] dose... or its ingredients."

"So far, these vaccines have shown themselves to be extraordinarily safe."

"Randomised trials have proved the effectiveness of some Covid treatments and saved vast numbers of lives... also showing... overblown claims about treatments... as hydroxychloroquine and , were incorrect."

"Currently, there are few books that can help at school level with communication issues in statistics and DS. One exception is Spiegelhalter, a masterpiece in how to communicate easy, not-so-easy, hard, and very difficult topics in statistics. It uses real-world problem solving as a starting point for introducing statistical ideas. One reviewer of the book suggested “it should be compulsory reading for teachers and students of statistics (indeed all subjects that use or produce data), in schools, colleges and universities.” Although the Spiegelhalter book is a great example of communication, the paucity of material in this area shows that there is an urgent need to develop a pedagogy and a corresponding range of resources in writing and communicating statistics and DS."

"No scientific discovery is named after its original inventor."

"Well I thought about my formula. Hard work, a little bit of luck, a little bit of talent and a lot of help from my friends, students and professors."

"For me, it was all right. There were very few bumps along the way. I think it helps that you work very hard and you enjoy it. Yeah. That is my advice to young people. First of all, you need to find something that really you love and then do everything you can to preserve that. There’s no easy road to be creative, I think."

"Maria had a little sheep As pale as rime its hair, And all the places Maria came The sheep did tail her there; In Maria's class it came at last, A sheep can't enter there; It made the children clap their hands, A sheep in class, that's rare."