Other

I don't see the logic of rejecting data just because they seem incredible. A quote of British Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle (1915 - 2001) found in "Statistically Speaking - A Dictionary of Quotations" compiled by Carl Gaither and Alma Cavazos-Gaither (IOP publishing, 1996) p. 150.

Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write! Quote from the presidential address in 1951 of mathematical statistician Samuel S. Wilks (1906 - 1964) to the American Statistical Association found in "JASA",Vol. 46, No. 253., pp. 1-18. Wilks was paraphrasing Herbert G. Wells (1866 - 1946) from his book "Mankind in the Making". The full H.G. Wells quote reads: "The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex worldwide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write."

One sees in this essay that the theory of probabilities is basically only common sense reduced to a calculus. This quote of French astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749 - 1827) may be found in "A philosophical Essay on Probabilities" (Springer, 1995) p. 124 English translation of "Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilites (1814)"