“The information you have is not the information you want. The information you want is not the information you need. The information you need is not the information you can obtain. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay”

Source: Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Peter L. Bernstein 1
American academic 1919–2009

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“The approach and strategies are very similar in that you gather all the information you can and then keep adding to that base of information as things develop.”

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Context: The approach and strategies are very similar in that you gather all the information you can and then keep adding to that base of information as things develop. You do whatever the probabilities indicated based on the knowledge that you have at that time, but you are always willing to modify your behaviour or your approach as you get new information. In bridge, you behave in a way that gets the best from your partner. And in business, you behave in the way that gets the best from your managers and your employees.

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Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

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“In the face of almost infinite useful knowledge, we have adopted the strategy of "information regeneration rather than information retrieval." …most importantly, you should be able to generate the result you need even if no one has ever done it before you”

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Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)
Context: In the face of almost infinite useful knowledge, we have adopted the strategy of "information regeneration rather than information retrieval."... most importantly, you should be able to generate the result you need even if no one has ever done it before you—you will not be dependent on the past to have done everything you will ever need in mathematics.

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