Thomas J. Sargent Quotes

The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.

You know, I think I'm the worst player to talk to about statistics.

I believe sanity and realism can be restored to the teaching of Mathematical Statistics most easily and directly by entrusting such teaching largely to men and women who have had personal experience of research in the Natural Sciences.

The type of measure used placed constraints on which statistics can be used.

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.

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.

I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture.

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.

For 'Power of 10,' you can look at the methodology at CBS.com, it's a company called Rasmussen Reports. We poll thousands and thousands of people for each question, a real cross section of the United States.

Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.

Definition of a Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits than under analysis some of them won't stand up either.

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.

Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.

We spend our time bandying statistics about.

Every human creative endeavor is subject to mathematical law that you’re not always going to be right all the time.

You'll never hear me talk about stats.

Stats are for losers. They relish in them.

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.

Data science is the combination of analytics and the development of new algorithms.

If you're a social scientist worth your salt, you never do a univariate analysis.

I've never been a stat guy.

I'm not a numbers type of guy who says I need this many yards, this many touchdowns.

I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, 'with four parameters I can fit an elephant and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.'