Tom Vilsack Quotes

Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.

The number one metaphor I have in my mind for writing a screenplay is that...you're trying to climb a mountain blindfolded. And the funny thing about that is, you think, 'Okay, that's hard because you're climbing up a rock face, and you don't know where you're going, and you don't know where the top is, you can't see what's below you...' But actually the hardest part about climbing a mountain blindfolded is just finding the mountain.

We need to be able to make decisions even though part of the information that we have is incorrect and wrong.

If you give me a week, I might think of one.

It's hard to pin down precise dates on these things.

Whenever you can, count.

It is better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong.

None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers …. People are getting from A to B and it's not clear how they are getting there....

We live in a culture that venerates scores. We affix numbers to how much fat is in our mochachinos, how quickly our telephones suck information from the air, how much pain we're in. Reading, too, has become a skill to quantifiably assess.

There will always be divergence of views on the output gap, as it is unobservable in a rigorous direct sense. There are only estimates. How can there be a strong consensus on that?

The numbers are hard to control.

The numbers don't always tell the whole story.

You need an infinite stretch of time ahead of you to start to think, infinite energy to make the smallest decision. The world is getting denser. The immense number of useless projects is bewildering. Too many things have to be put in to balance up an uncertain scale. You can't disappear anymore. You die in a state of total indecision.

Tell me a way you think this can work." "We'll find a way," I tell her. "That's not an answer. It's a hope." "Hope's gotten us this far. Not answers.

That's the number one thing I hear about humans. You have all these choices, so you're confused all the time, and you think so much that you're never happy.

But the indeterminate future is somehow one in which probability and statistics are the dominant modality for making sense of the world. Bell curves and random walks define what the future is going to look like. The standard pedagogical argument is that high schools should get rid of calculus and replace it with statistics, which is really important and actually useful. There has been a powerful shift toward the idea that statistical ways of thinking are going to drive the future.

All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.

If one does not expect the unexpected, one will not find it out, since it is not to be searched out, and difficut to compass.

A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as so much as existing. Away with it!

I think I have a big advantage. But it's certainly a three-person race. And you have a couple of other people that are very talented there too. So we have a five-man race. And I think that it's going to be not easy. I have a big advantage. But a long way from being won.

I couldn't tell you exactly what I like about golf. Just when you think you've got it mastered it lets you know you haven't. I'm just crazy enough to do it.

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

In statistics, what disappears behind rows of numbers is death.

Numbers are a fearful thing.

War is like a game of chess ... but with this little difference, that in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies of troops can never be known to anyone.... Success never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or even on numbers, and least of all on position.