Resource Library

A quote that might be used in examining the actual chance for winning lottery. The quote is by American author and social commentator Fran Lebowitz (1950 - ) and appeared in the 1994 book "Glibquips: Funny Words by Funny Women" edited by Roz Warren.

A quote that could be used in discussing the difference between probability (chance), which talks about the experiment about to happen, and luck, which talks about the results that have already happened. The quote is by American writer Amy Tan (1952 - ) from her 1991 novel "The Kitchen God's Wife."

A quote that could be used in discussing the idea that results of an individual experiment are random and highly variable compared with the stability of the "long run". The quote is by Native American author Mourning Dove (1884 – 1936), also known as Christal Quintasket, in her 1927 novel "Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range"

A quote that might be used in discussing how statistical models attempt to incorporate the main relevant explanatory factors and assume that small components are part of random error term. The quote is by American novelist Anne Tyler (1941 - ) and appeared in the New York Times in 2004

A quote that might be used in discussing the Law of Large Numbers. The quote is by English author and satirist Delarivier Manley (1663 – 1724) from her 1709 book "Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of Both Sexes."

A quote to aid in a discussion of drawing out the salient features of data in plots and statistics. The quote is by small business and organization expert Stephanie Winston from her book The Organized Executive: A Program for Productivity--New Ways to Manage Time, Paper, People, and the Digital Office (1994)

A quote to help in discussing the importance of being able to interpret data and it's central role in a general education. The quote is found in Pearl S. Buck and Carlos P. Romulo, Friend to Friend (1958).

A quote to aid in discussing the difference between individual anecdotes and systematically gathered data. The quote is by journalist Brooks Jackson (1941 - ) and Professor of Communication Kathleen Hall Jamieson (1946 - ) from University of Pennsylvania (founders of the Annenberg Foundation’s Factcheck.org) in their book UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (2007).

A quote to help in discussing the ideas of sampling without replacement (and more specifically in 5-card poker games). The quote is by Canadian author Isabel Huggan (1943 - ) from her 1984 book The Elizabeth Stories.

A quote to help in discussing over-interpretation of the results of an analysis (e.g. improper extrapolation, unwarranted conclusions that don't match the design of the study, neglecting the true variability in the data, etc.). The quote is by American nonfiction author and science reporter for the New York Times Natalie Angier (1958 - ). The quote is from her book: The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (2007). The quote may also be found at www.quotationsbywomen.com. In context, the quote reads: "The power of science lies in its willingness to attack a big problem by dividing it into many small pieces, its embrace of the unfairly maligned practice known as reductionism. At the same time, the piecemeal approach demands that scientists be circumspect to an often tedious degree and that they resist – no matter how much they are pushed by their university’s public relations department or by desperate journalists – making more of the data than the data make of themselves."