“No statements of mere averages... are of the least avail against our statistics. Fluctuations from the averages are the sole reliable test...”

—  Karl Pearson

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

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 "No statements of mere averages... are of the least avail against our statistics. Fluctuations from the averages are the…" by Karl Pearson?
Karl Pearson photo
Karl Pearson 65
English mathematician and biometrician 1857–1936

Related quotes

Tom Clancy photo

“The more information available to the average person, the greater the synergy that develops from it.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

1990s, Schafer interview (1995)
Context: America is the most inventive country in the world. Why? Because everybody has access to information. In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything. The more information available to the average person, the greater the synergy that develops from it.

Daniel Abraham photo

“Humanity was so flawed. Not just her, but everyone. Half the population was below average intelligence. Half below average dedication. Average adherence to duty. The cruel law of statistics. It was astounding that as a race they’d managed as much as they had.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Epilogue (p. 525)
Nemesis Games (2015)

John Howard Yoder photo

“After Constantine … the ruler, not the average person or the weak person, is the model for ethical deliberations. A moral statement on the rightness of truth-telling or the wrongness of killing is tested first by whether a ruler can meet such standards.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 138

Douglas Coupland photo

“Let's go out and buy a statistically average meal from a large multinational restaurant chain. That usually fixes about seventy-five percent of life's problems.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Attribution debunked in Langworth's Churchill by Himself. First known appearance is in a 1992 usenet post https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=rec.arts.comics.misc/EMj3ZowKq1U/E0dsEBwdZEgJ.
Misattributed
Source: Google books link https://books.google.com/books?id=vbsU21fEhLAC&q=average+voter#v=snippet&q=average%20voter&f=false

“Probability and statistics are now so obviously necessary tools for understanding many diverse things that we must not ignore them even for the average student.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

“The average black household earned one-sixth as much as the average white household in 2000, down from one-quarter in 1995.”

Patrick Bond (1961) American academic

Source: South Africa and Global Apartheid: Continental and International Policies (2003), p. 8

“He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.”

Walter Kaufmann book Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist

Source: Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1951), p. 151
Context: There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee.

Andy Rooney photo

“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

“An average person with average talent, ambition and education can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Related topics