Carl Sagan Quotes

The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability.

Intelligence takes chances with limited data in an arena where mistakes are not only possible but also necessary.

I'm not too worried about that. I am a big believer in modeling.

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgements of probabilities, and not on certainties.

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.

In many spheres of human endeavor, from science to business to education to economic policy, good decisions depend on good measurement.

Information is the resolution of uncertainty.

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

A great many decisions just can’t be made with confidence because the data just doesn’t exist …. [however] just because we don’t have the information doesn’t mean that we can’t get it.

We need to know what are the best jobs for which we can train young people so that the jobs will be available in growing numbers, are not dead end jobs, the jobs will not be obsoleted by automation, and there are no artificial ethnic or racial barriers to employment. Your Bureau of Labor Statistics has been working on this for 8 weeks now, and you come with your staff and say that you do not have sufficient data to make this judgment. Well if there were sufficient data, we could apply it and make the decisions without you. The reason we need your expertise is that your intuition and experience should enable you to make a better guess with the insufficient information than we would make who have no experience.

Whether baseball or football, we're tasked in front offices with making decisions under uncertainty. How do you corral that uncertainty in a way to make more consistently better decisions? That's very similar.

Choices are easy when you have nothing to lose.

To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.

Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping

No great marketing decisions have ever been made on qualitative data

Statistics may be defined as "a body of methods for making wise decisions in the face of uncertainty.

He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.

Data is great, but strategy is better

Why don't I talk about Big Data? Because I am focused on intelligent answers and not speeds and feeds. It doesn't matter if it is quick if it's the wrong answer.

You have to leave all your options open. And if you don't leave your options open, you're a fool.

Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.

The great temptation of Big Data is that we can stop worrying about comprehension and focus on preventive action instead. Instead of wasting precious public resources on understanding the 'why' - i.e., exploring the reasons as to why terrorists become terrorists - one can focus on predicting the 'when' so that a timely intervention could be made.

Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.

Deciding under uncertainty is bad enough, but deciding under an illusion of certainty is catastrophic.

Determine on some course more than a wild exposure to each chance.