Ronald Coase Quotes

The Government are very keen on amassing statistics; they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of those figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.

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.

Data is not necessarily information. Information does not necessarily lead to knowledge. And knowledge is not always sufficient to discover truth and breed wisdom.

Above all else show the data.

There are three kind of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

People say that it’s easy to lie with statistics. Well it’s a lot easier to lie without them.

It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without it.

The numbers are hard to control.

The core advantage of data is that it tells you something about the world that you didn't know before.

Data without generalization is just gossip.

Oh, figures!' answered Ned. 'You can make figures do whatever you want.

There are three kinds of liars: liars, damned liars, and statisticians

Statistics, one may hope, will improve gradually, and become good for something. Meanwhile, it is to be feared the crabbed satirist was partly right, as things go: "A judicious man," says he, "looks at Statistics, not to get knowledge, but to save himself from having ignorance foisted on him."

Surveys show that surveys never lie.

The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.

You can use data wrong. It's just like polling. There have been a lot of politicians who go conduct a poll to figure out what they believe.

The 'data' (given) of research are not so much given as taken out of a constantly elusive matrix of happenings. We should speak of capta rather than data.

To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face

Teach where data can be found or how it can be derived, not the recording of data.

Men lie, women lie, numbers dont

No doubt about it: error is the rule, truth is the accident of error.

Whenever a man can get hold of numbers, they are invaluable: if correct, they assist in informing his own mind, but they are still more useful in deluding the minds of others. Numbers are the masters of the weak, but the slaves of the strong.

The next darwin is more likely to be a data wonk than a naturalist wandering through an exotic landscape.

It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge.

Self-analysis always cheats.