Ted Cruz Quotes

It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without it.

The Government are very keen on amassing statistics; they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of those figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.

Polls are like perfume—very nice to smell; dangerous to drink.

I have never had an interest in opinion polls. They are merely an indicator, that's all.

If the data do not prove that indexing wins, well, the data are wrong.

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

If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.

If you just look at the data, you are led to believe that things are getting better, rather than worse. That's why the fall is really precipitous, once you hit the ceiling.

Nobody looks at opinion polls with more attention than politicians, but of course you've got to remember that a single poll is a snapshot in time.

I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

There is a rampant tendency in any industry where someone is trying to sell something with a bunch of data, where they cherry pick a little bit... bias a little bit. This becomes quite easy when there is an enormous amount of data to cherry pick from.

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.

Good data is hard to find. Hard data is good to find.

We spend our time bandying statistics about.

There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom…

The first lesson that you must learn is that, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.

The numbers are hard to control.

I know that a lot of people love to say that polls are wrong or don't matter, and from time to time they are - it depends on who they are polling.

Being a skeptical and thoughtful consumer of polls is essential.

The promoters of big data would like us to believe that behind the lines of code and vast databases lie objective and universal insights into patterns of human behavior, be it consumer spending, criminal or terrorist acts, healthy habits, or employee productivity. But many big-data evangelists avoid taking a hard look at the weaknesses.

There's a lot of work to be done in the polling world, and a need to continue to rethink how we do what we do. We also need to be more open to the idea that any one input - in this case, polls - may not be the only way to hear what people are saying.

According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.