“In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."”

— Freeman Dyson

With that, the conversation was over.
"A meeting with Enrico Fermi" in Nature 427 (22 January 2004), p. 297 (subscription required) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/427297a

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theoretical physicist and mathematician 1923

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