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MacSulach
Daedalian Member
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 Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 11:52 am Post subject: 1 |
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"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write"
Anyone got an original reference (Who, where and when) for the line above? |
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tigerbalm
Daedalian Member
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| Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 12:40 pm Post subject: 2 |
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| H. G. Wells |
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MacSulach*
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 4:31 pm Post subject: 3 |
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| Where and When? |
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MatthewV
Daedalian Member :_
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| Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 11:13 pm Post subject: 4 |
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At the beginning of the 20th century. I would guess in England.
But nothing exact comes up. |
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extropalopakettle
No offense, but....
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 12:56 am Post subject: 5 |
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According to this page (and referencing a refereed journal on history of mathematics) : http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/chance_news/recent_news/chance_news_11.03.html
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The H.G. Wells Quote on statistics: a question of accuracy.
Historia Mathematica 6 (1979), 30-33
James W. Tankard
Gerd Gegerenzer starts and ends his book "Calculated Risks" with two famous quotations:"...in this world there is nothing certain but death and taxes", attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and "Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write", attributed to H. G. Wells.
Gigerenzer calls the first quote "Franklin's law". About the second quotation, he writes in his notes:
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| This statement is quoted from How Lie with Statistics (Huff, 1954/1993), where it serves as an epigraph. No is given. I have searched through scores of statistical textbooks in which it has since been quoted and found none where a was given. I could not find this statement in Wells' work either. Thus, the source of this statement remains uncertain, another example of Franklin's law. |
We could not resist the challenge to find the origin of this famous quotation. Its origin is described by in this article by Tankard. It turns out to be another example of statistics stealing from mathematics. Tankard states that the earliest occurrence of the quotation in writings about statistics is as an epigraph at the beginning of Helen M Walker's Studies in the History of Statistical Method (1929),
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| The time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world-wide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write. |
and attributed it to H.G. Wells book Mankind in the Making. Tankard states that this is part of a longer sentence in this book:
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| The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex worldwide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write. |
In other words, Walker left out the to a need for a sound training in mathematical sciences. Apparently, "Statistical thinking" first occurred in the quote from Sam Wilks' presidential address to the American Statistical Society "The Teaching of Undergraduate Statistics" (1). Here we find the statement:
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| Perhaps H. G. Wells was right when he said "Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write!" |
Thus the takeover was completed! Tankard remarks that statistics does not occur in the index in any of Wells' autobiographies and biographer Lovat Dickson told him that he could not recall any place in Wells' writings where he dealt specifically with statistics.
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MacSulach*
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 10:47 am Post subject: 6 |
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Thanks lots!!
Can I trouble you for another?
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" |
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Jack_Ian
Big Endian
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:05 pm Post subject: 7 |
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| Google gives this as the answer. |
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MacSulach*
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 3:20 pm Post subject: 8 |
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| It was the Einstein one i was after, but none of those links seem to work. |
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Jack_Ian
Big Endian
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 4:00 pm Post subject: 9 |
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| This link detailing Einstein quotes wrote: |
"The supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience."
This is usually paraphrased to: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."
This is very similar to "Ockham's Razor", only it warns about too much simplicity. It is also similar to what has become known as the "K.I.S.S. method": Keep It Simple, Stupid— but never over simplify. |
So it appears that the original quote was much longer but was then paraphrased down to the quote you gave. |
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MacSulach*
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 4:19 pm Post subject: 10 |
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| Fantastic!! but I need to know where it came from! |
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MacSulach*
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 5:39 pm Post subject: 11 |
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| s'ok got it now, will post it if antyone else is interested |
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MacSulach*
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 10:13 am Post subject: 12 |
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Here is one more. Need to know where, when etc florence firtst said this
"Statistics... is the most important science in the whole world, for upon it depends the practical application of every other (science) and of every art: the one science essential to all political and social administration, all education, for it only gives exact results of our experience . To understand God's thoughts, we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose" |
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Jack_Ian
Big Endian
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| Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 10:35 am Post subject: 13 |
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Here are some more for you:
A statistician is a mathematician broken down by age and sex.
99% of statisticians have more than the average number of legs.
A statistician is someone who thinks he can keep his face in a fire so long as he has his feet in a bucket of water. |
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