Statistical Outliers Quotes

Averages are useful because many traits, behaviors, and outcomes are distributed in a bell-shaped curve, with most results clustered around the middle and a much smaller group of outliers at the high and low ends.

It is impossible, by the way, when picking one example of anything, to avoid picking one which is atypical in some sense.

Any one game in baseball doesn't tell you that much, just as any one poll doesn't tell you that much.

I'm interested in the left side of the Bell Curve.

Polls are for strippers and cross-country skiers.

The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.

Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much everyone is on a tail of at least one of them. We may collect strange memorabilia or read esoteric books, hold unusual religious beliefs or wear odd-sized shoes, suffer rare diseases or enjoy obscure movies.

Develop a respect and reverence for the principle of variation: the idea that the message ain't in the mean, the mode or the median - it's in the differences that occur throughout a population.