“Probability is too important to be left to the experts. […] The experts, by their very expert training and practice, often miss the obvious and distort reality seriously. […] The desire of the experts to publish and gain credit in the eyes of their peers has distorted the development of probability theory from the needs of the average user. The comparatively late rise of the theory of probability shows how hard it is to grasp, and the many paradoxes show clearly that we, as humans, lack a well grounded intuition in the matter. Neither the intuition of the man in the street, nor the sophisticated results of the experts provides a safe basis for important actions in the world we live in.”
Source: The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers (1991), p. 4 [emphasis in original]
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Richard Hamming90
American mathematician and information theorist 1915–1998Related quotes
Steve Dillon (1962–2016) British comic artist
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Massimo Pigliucci (1964) chair of the Department of Philosophy at CUNY-Lehman College
Nonsense on Stilts (2010), Ch. 12 : Who's Your Expert?
Donald A. Norman book The Design of Everyday Things
Source: The Design of Everyday Things (1988, 2002), Ch. 6, p. 156.
“For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.”
Jasper Fforde book One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
Source: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
“Experts have
their expert fun
ex cathedra
telling one
just how nothing
can be done.”
Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet
Experts
Grooks
“If an expert says it can't be done, get another expert.”
David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel
As quoted in Words from the Wise : Over 6,000 of the Smartest Things Ever Said (2007) by Rosemarie Jarski, p. 170
John Allen Paulos book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper
Source: A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995), Chapter 9, “Fraud Alleged in Pennsylvania Senate Race” (p. 45)
“Clarke's Fourth Law: For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.”
Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host
Profiles of the Future (1999, London: Victor Gollancz) p. 143
On Clarke's Laws
Paul Vixie (1963) American internet pioneer
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