George E. P. Box Quotes

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

All models have faults - that doesn't mean you can't use them as tools for making decisions.

The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models. They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.

All models are false but some models are useful

Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.

In our work, we are always between Scylla and Charybdis; we may fail to abstract enough, and miss important physics, or we may abstract too much and end up with fictitious objects in our models turning into real monsters that devour us.

You can build a statistical model and that's all well and good, but if you're dealing with a new type of financial instrument, for example, or a new type of situation - then the choices you're making are pretty arbitrary in a lot of respects.

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.

Math is a language that you use to describe statistics, but really it's about collecting information and putting it in an order that makes sense.

We spend our time bandying statistics about.

We think that computer models represent reality especially if we developed the models.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

I was in charge of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So I had some of the most brilliant mathematical statistical minds in the country, who would put together the modern technology, if you like, of understanding the economy and tracking it and trying to influence it.

I'm an analytics girl.

I've never been a stat guy.

Computer models of the climate....[are] a very dubious business if you don't have good inputs.

Self-respect to be nourished in the mind of the pupil, is one of the most valuable results of a well conducted education.

Stick to the old truths and the old paths, and learn their di- vineness by sick-beds and in every-day work, and do not darken your mind with intellectual puzzles, which may breed disbelief, but can never breed vital religion or practical usefulness.

The analysis of statistics is a big part of the modern game, and it's important as a modern manager to embrace areas that can help your team and players improve.

Before the curse of statistics fell upon mankind we lived a happy, innocent life, full of merriment and go and informed by fairly good judgment.

Simplicity and beauty are the signs not of truth but of a well-constructed approximate model of a limited domain of phenomena.

[Statistics are] the only tools by which an opening can be cut through the formidable thicket of difficulties that bars the path of those who pursue the Science of Man.

Statistics have proven that the surest way to get anything out of the public mind and never hear of it again is to have a Senate committee appointed to look into it.

One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.