"It is impossible for a Die, with such determin’d force and direction, not to fall on such a determin’d side, only I don’t know the force and direction which makes it fall on such a determin’d side, and therefore I call that Chance, which is nothing but want of Art [...]" (John Arbuthnot, "Of the Laws of Chance", 1692)
"The art of drawing conclusions from experiments and observations consists in evaluating probabilities and in estimating whether they are sufficiently great or numerous enough to constitute proofs. This kind of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than it is commonly thought to be […]" (Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, cca. 1790)
"[Statistics] is both a science and an art. It is a science in that its methods are basically systematic and have general application; and an art in that their successful application depends to a considerable degree on the skill and special experience of the statistician, and on his knowledge of the field of application, e.g. economics." (Leonard H C Tippett, "Statistics", 1943)
"Sampling is the science and art of controlling and measuring the reliability of useful statistical information through the theory of probability." (William E Deming, "Some Theory of Sampling", 1950)
"Statistics is the fundamental and most important part of inductive logic. It is both an art and a science, and it deals with the collection, the tabulation, the analysis and interpretation of quantitative and qualitative measurements. It is concerned with the classifying and determining of actual attributes as well as the making of estimates and the testing of various hypotheses by which probable, or expected, values are obtained. It is one of the means of carrying on scientific research in order to ascertain the laws of behavior of things - be they animate or inanimate. Statistics is the technique of the Scientific Method." (Bruce D Greenschields & Frank M Weida, "Statistics with Applications to Highway Traffic Analyses", 1952)
"Statistics is the name for that science and art which deals with uncertain inferences - which uses numbers to find out something about nature and experience." (Warren Weaver, 1952)
"The fact is that, despite its mathematical base, statistics is as much an art as it is a science. A great many manipulations and even distortions are possible within the bounds of propriety. Often the statistician must choose among methods, a subjective process, and find the one that he will use to represent the facts."
"Statistics are the art of stating in precise terms that which one does not know." (William Kruskal, "Statistics, Moliere, and Henry Adams", American Scientist Magazine, 1967)
"Every field of knowledge has its subject matter and its methods, along with a style for handling them. The field of Probability has a great deal of the Art component in it-not only is the subject matter rather different from that of other fields, but at present the techniques are not well organized into systematic methods. As a result each problem has to be "looked at in the right way" to make it easy to solve. Thus in probability theory there is a great deal of art in setting up the model, in solving the problem, and in applying the results back to the real world actions that will follow.
"In the laws of probability theory, likelihood distributions are fixed properties of a hypothesis. In the art of rationality, to explain is to anticipate. To anticipate is to explain." (Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, "A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation", 2005)
"Statistics is the art and science of designing studies and analyzing the data that those studies produce. Its ultimate goal is translating data into knowledge and understanding of the world around us. In short, statistics is the art and science of learning from data." (Alan Agresti & Christine Franklin, "Statistics: The Art and Science of Learning from Data" 3rd Ed., 2013)
"The art of drawing conclusions from experiments and observations consists in evaluating probabilities and in estimating whether they are sufficiently great or numerous enough to constitute proofs." (Antoine Lavoisier)
No comments:
Post a Comment