Chance News 26

Quotations

It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the

leading causes of statistics.

Fletcher Krebel
Reader's Digest (December 1961)

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One of the naturalists had argued that On the Origin of Species was too theoretical, that Darwin should have just "put his facts before us and let them rest." In response, Darwin reflected that science, to be of any service, required more than list making; it needed larger ideas that could make sense of piles of data. Otherwise, Darwin said, a geologist "might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours." Data without generalizations are useless; facts without explanatory principles are meaningless.

Michael Shermer
Why Darwin Matters. The Case Against Intelligent Design. (page 1)

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Forsooths

He (Persi Diaconis) proved that it takes seven shuffles to perfectly randomize a pack of cards.

Justin Mullins
New Scientist
March 24-30, 2007, p 52

Contributed by Laurie Snell.

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We were eleven people obtaining those 30.000 millions. I want the 11% that corresponds to me.

A politician of Madrid in a phone dialogue recorded by the police.
El Pais
20th October, 2006,

Contributed by Carlos Silva.

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Statistics in the history of smoking

The Cigarette Century: The rise, fall, and deadly persistence of the product that defined America
Allan M. Brandt, 600 pp.
Basic Books, 2007, Amazon $23.76.

To be continued.

The Numbers Guy

Annette Georgey recently wrote to the the Isolated Staticiians:

A friend just alerted me to a blog maintained by "The Numbers Guy," a columnist for the Wall Street Journal who writes about probability and statistics in the news. Although the WSJ online is available to subscribers only, the blog is available to all. It contains many great examples for the classroom, written in everyday English, such as the odds of a three-way tie in the TV game show "Jeopardy," understanding statistical significance in recent hormone studies, the Texas lottery, and more.

Annette Gourgey CUNY