Laurel Clark Quotes

A typical medical practice is like an old-fashioned business which keeps all of its records on paper. It can probably track down any individual transaction if it needs to, but it's basically helpless when it comes to overall measurements of performance. And that's the big problem.

Much of what I do in my job is think about whether relationships we see in data are causal, as opposed to just reflecting correlations. It's exactly these issues which come up in evaluating studies in public health.

Troubleshooting a wiring problem is a soul-killing experience.

I'm very much a technical person.

When it comes to our perceptions, one is an event, two is a pattern, three is a trend, and four is fact.

I always remind myself that what one observes is at best a combination of variance and returns, not just returns.

Then: I google "time-series visualization" and start work on a new version of my model, thinking that maybe I can impress her with a prototype. I am really into the kind of girl you can impress with a prototype.

Data only exists within the framework of a vision you're building to, a hypothesis of where you're moving to.

Statistics do not speak for themselves.

Above all else show the data.

Successful businesses measure and count things. I think that's a safe assumption on top of which we can drop the following hypothesis: unsuccessful business either measure nothing, the wrong things, too many things, or finally, they measure the right things but they don't communicate the measurements efficiently.

Trying to analyze a situation without enough data was like looking at a photograph of a ball in flight and trying to gauge its direction. Is it going up, down, sideways? Is it about to collide with a baseball bat? Is it moving at all, or is something on the blind side holding it in place? A single frame didn't mean a thing. Patterns were based on data. With enough datapoints, you could predict just about anything.

Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.

Context is to data what water is to a dolphin

We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge.

The idea is to go from numbers to information to understanding.

This is what analysts have calculated. It's a number that's out there and we're not arguing with it.

Averages don't always reveal the most telling realities. You know, Shaquille O'Neal and I have an average height of 6 feet.

Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write!

[Statistics] The science that can prove everything except the usefulness of statistics.

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

Data really powers everything that we do.

The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.

Modern statisticians are familiar with the notion that any finite body of data contains only a limited amount of information on any point under examination; that this limit is set by the nature of the data themselves, and cannot be increased by any amount of ingenuity expended in their statistical examination: that the statistician's task, in fact, is limited to the extraction of the whole of the available information on any particular issue.

Why don't I talk about Big Data? Because I am focused on intelligent answers and not speeds and feeds. It doesn't matter if it is quick if it's the wrong answer.