“The problem may be briefly stated: What does "median mortality of eight months" signify in our vernacular? I suspect that most people, without training in statistics, would read such a statement as "I will probably be dead in eight months" - the very conclusion that must be avoided, since it isn't so, and since attitude matters so much.”

The Median Isn't the Message (1985)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The problem may be briefly stated: What does "median mortality of eight months" signify in our vernacular? I suspect th…" by Stephen Jay Gould?

Stephen Jay Gould274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

Related quotes

“My darling, you are indisposed! You must remain abed for the next eight months. Little Buford - "
"I am NOT naming our child Buford…”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

“It’s a responsibility that I take most seriously, so excuse me for banning you from killing them because you have reverse PMS. (Acheron)
Reverse PMS? (Artemis)
Yeah, unlike a normal woman, you’re cranky twenty-eight days out of the month. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

“I lost the job. Well the honest truth is that this has been embellished by, probably by me, in the sense that there were two of us who were taken on as trainees, and this was in the 80s, I think it was the late 80s, and it was him or me who was going to get the job at the end of, at the end of, eight months or nine months. It was mano-a-mano and of course it was him who got it.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Interviewed on Desert Island Discs http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00935b6, first broadcast on 30 October 2005, about his early journalistic career working for The Times and then as Brussels correspondent for The Daily Telegraph. In fact, rather than failing to beat another trainee to win a permanent position, he was sacked for falsifying a quotation http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6901161.stm. <br class="br">2000s, 2005

“The problem I have with all this religion stuff is that I can't relate to it. I think most people got into 'cos it gave them something to do on a Sunday, but since all the shops are now open it isn't required as much.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

“It must be borne in mind that the gestation of a single organism is the work of but a few days, weeks, or months, but the gestation (so to speak) of a whole creation is a matter probably involving enormous spaces of time.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 210

“To be without love is to be without grace, what matters most in life.
We is so much better than I.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

“I spend eight to nine months working abroad and cram in a holiday when I have the odd week off. This year, three of those months were spent in America playing gigs with my band, so we got to visit all kinds of places from Arizona to New York. After a few weeks, I really began to miss family and friends not to mention baked beans!”

Katie Melua (1984) British singer-songwriter

[York Membery, Travelling Life - Katie Melua, http://ultratravel.telegraph.co.uk/site/pages/ultra_experts/travelling_life_-_katie_melua_page1.php, The Telegraph, 2006-09-18]

“Furthermore, since I have observed that our citizens are distracted with public affairs and private business, I have thought it best to write briefly, so that my readers, whose intervals of leisure are small, may be able to comprehend in a short time.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 3
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V

“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

As quoted in Women's Words : The Columbia Book of Quotations by Women (1996) by Mary Biggs, p. 2

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Stephen Jay Gould274

Related quotes

Related topics