Fred Brooks Quotes

Do not speculate; get data and calculate.

You have to be willing to have the decision-making follow the data.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.

Decisions should be based on facts, objectively considered.

Facts are the air of scientists. Without them you can never fly.

I'm a bit of a freak for evidence-based analysis. I strongly believe in data.

Careful economic analysis does have one important benefit, which is that it can help kill ideas that are completely logically inconsistent or wildly at variance with the data. This insight covers at least 90 percent of proposed economic policies

You can't make evidence-based policy decisions without evidence.

It is clear that I am a person who believes fundamentally in facts, evidence, data, and science, which supports decision-making and allows us to function as a society based on knowledge.

It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.

Demagoguery beats data in making public policy.

Decisions should be based on facts, objectively considered what I call the fact-founded, thought-through approach to decision making.

You don't know what I'm going to say until I say it and that's because I'm only looking at the facts and the evidence.

Good science is all about following the data as it shows up and letting yourself be proven wrong, and letting everything change while you're working on it - and I think writing is the same way.

Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. Bush asks people to believe.

Facts are important to me, not emotions. I would caution against speculation.

It's hard to get money to support your [non-profit] organization if you have no evidence. It's very much like the acting business: You need an agent and manager so you can get a job to get resources, but you can't get an agent and a manager unless people see your work.

I believe in evidence-based decision making. I want to know what the facts are.

I don't read my reviews, I measure them.

The more facts I can have, the better. I can operate very nicely between them, but I am not very good at making things up. I am not sure how ethical it is.

To enhance the defense of the other agencies of government, including our law enforcement agency - it's so important. They're doing such a great job, by the way. We will put together a team of our best military, civilian, and private sector cybersecurity experts to comprehensively review all of our cybersecurity systems and technologies.

If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.

It's okay for someone to chase me and then try to cut me off so I ram my car into a tree . . . I mean, I know this guy was trying to do his job, but his "job" almost landed me half-dead.

It is vital that our work be grounded in the evidence and thus accepted by the public.

Data is the next Intel Inside.