{"id":15626,"date":"2017-06-26T00:50:53","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T04:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=15626"},"modified":"2024-01-01T08:03:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T12:03:25","slug":"quotes-on-writing-with-statistics","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/what-is-readability\/how-to-write-about-statistics\/quotes-on-writing-with-statistics\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on writing with statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers & others say<\/h2>\n

\"Quotes

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“Smoking causes 67 percent of all statistics.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
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“Statistics are like bikinis; they reveal a good deal that is both interesting and instructive, but they usually conceal what is really vital.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
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“Two-thirds of all statistics are made up on the spot.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
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“Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
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“Did you know that 87.166253% of all statistics claim a precision of results that is not justified by the method employed?”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
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“Numbers, when they’re large enough, simply blow our mental fuses. People often find anything with an ‘-illion’ on the end incomprehensible. They make a useless mental shortcut: ‘lots of zeros = big.’”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, authors, The Numbers Game<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Great clots of numbers dropped into a story with a steam shovel create a wall of abstraction.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Blundell, author, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“voodoo statistics: To twist statistical information to make bad data seem good. Example: In a race between two cars, the loser reports that he finished second and his opponent finished next to last.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014BuzzWhack<\/h6>\n
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“Any economic forecast that includes a decimal point suggests a level of precision that isn’t really possible.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg, producers of Planet Money<\/h6>\n
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“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William E. Deming, American management consultant, engineer and statistician<\/h6>\n
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“We do not expect reporters to be mathematical geniuses. But we do expect them to sidestep their mind-numbing fear of mathematics long enough to ask, \u2018Does this make sense?\u2019 \u2018What would I conclude from these numbers?”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 A.K. Dewdney, author of 200% of Nothing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Benjamin Disraeli,19th century British prime minister<\/h6>\n
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“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Albert Einstein, genius<\/h6>\n
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“A long presentation was being made that was overloaded with dull, detailed statistics. Number after number was read off. When the droning presenter finally paused for breath, [CEO of Goldman Sachs Sidney] Weinberg jumped up, waving his papers in mock triumph, to call out \u2018Bingo!’\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Charles Ellis, author, The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“They’ve done studies, you know. 60% of the time it works, every time.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Brian Fantana, a character played by Paul Rudd on “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” on his favorite cologne, Sex Panther<\/h6>\n
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“Two is not equal to three, not even for large values of two.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Grabel’s Law<\/h6>\n
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“Numbers bog down the text. Loading a story up with numbers almost guarantees low readership.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jack Hart, managing editor, The Oregonian<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Few members of our audience turn to The Oregonian because they\u2019re craving a good story problem.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jack Hart, managing editor, The Oregonian<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of 10 it will.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Paul Harvey, American radio broadcaster<\/h6>\n
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\u201cBig numbers fuzz our brains, and that is just as true in business as it is in public policy.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cSpeaking in ‘millions’ and ‘billions’ is like your second year of Spanish: You\u2019ve memorized the vocabulary, but it\u2019s hard to think in the language.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cThe challenge of communicating the significance of numbers \u2014 and acting on them \u2014 is to find ways to bring them closer to people\u2019s day-to-day experience.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cSome commentators have tried various ways to put [numbers into] perspective \u2014 if you laid those bills end to end, how many times would they circle the earth? (If there\u2019s one thing people have a keen intuition about, it\u2019s the earth\u2019s circumference, right?)”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cHow can you relate to this monstrous figure in the daily-life zone”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019ve all heard stats like this one (which is real): 27 billion disposable diapers are used each year in the United States \u2014 enough to stretch all the way to the moon and back seven times. What to say about this? For starters, it would be a funny joke to play on the astronauts.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cA good statistic is one that aids a decision or shapes an opinion. For a stat to do either of those, it must be dragged within the everyday. That\u2019s your job \u2014 to do the dragging.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cIn our world of billions and trillions, that can be a lot of manual labor. But it\u2019s worth it: A number people can grasp is a number that can make a difference.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts \u2014 for support rather than for illumination.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Andrew Lang, Scottish poet, folklorist, biographer, translator, novelist and scholar<\/h6>\n
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“Treating 2004 dollars the same as 1981 dollars isn\u2019t much different from treating dollars the same as rupees. The fact that 10 is a bigger number than 9 doesn\u2019t make 10 rupees worth more than $9; nor does it make $10 from 2004 worth more than $9 from 1981.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 David Leonhardt, The New York Times<\/em> economics correspondent<\/h6>\n
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“USA Today<\/em> has come out with a new survey. Apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 David Letterman, host, \u201cLate Show with David Letterman\u201d<\/h6>\n
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\u201cStatistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Aaron Levenstein, American academic<\/h6>\n
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\u201cTo us, business stories were people stories. Why? Because people ran businesses, people worked for businesses, people bought things from businesses, people sold supplies to businesses, etc. Sure, numbers mattered, but how did those numbers affect people? How were people\u2019s lives changed for good or ill by the numbers on the balance sheet?\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Joe Marren, assistant professor of communications at Buffalo State College<\/h6>\n
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\u201cIn November, when New York City Comptroller William Thompson released a study purporting to show that New Yorkers purchased more than $23 billion in counterfeit goods each year, The Times repeated the analysis as if it were credible. Quick arithmetic would have demonstrated that $23 billion would work out to roughly $8,000 per city household, a number ludicrous on its face.\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Daniel Okrent, The New York Times<\/em> ombudsman<\/h6>\n
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“Numbers without context, especially large ones with many zeros trailing behind, are about as intelligible as vowels without consonants.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Daniel Okrent, The New York Times<\/em> ombudsman<\/h6>\n
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“The real goal of visual thinking is to make the complex understandable by making it visible \u2014 not by making it simple.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin<\/em><\/h6>\n
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\u201cEvery time you feel your fingers reaching for the top row of the keyboard, ask, ‘What\u2019s it like?\u2019”<\/h5>\n
Chip Scanlan, senior scholar, Poynter Institute<\/h6>\n
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\u201cYour presentation will stand or fall on the quality, relevance and integrity of your content. If your numbers are boring, it\u2019s too late. If your images aren\u2019t relevant, putting them in four-color won\u2019t help. Design can never rescue failed content. The best design can do is not screw up good content\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Edward Tufte, the da Vinci of data<\/h6>\n
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“Just because the writers are down the hall from the designers doesn\u2019t mean you should separate their work as well.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Edward Tufte, the da Vinci of data<\/h6>\n
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\u201cInformation is absorbed in direct proportion to its vividness.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Diane West, president and co-founder of 2Connect<\/h6>\n
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“With one foot in a bucket of ice water, and one foot in a bucket of boiling water, you are, on the average, comfortable.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 WorkJoke.com<\/h6>\n
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“I asked a statistician for her phone number… and she gave me an estimate.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 WorkJoke.com<\/h6>\n
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