Data Manipulation Quotes

There are three kind of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

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."

People say that it’s easy to lie with statistics. Well it’s a lot easier to lie without them.

The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.

Statistics is the art of lying by means of figures.

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.

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

We have entered an era where the kinds of data and analyses that people run have gotten incredibly complicated. So you have researchers using sophisticated software programs that they probably don't understand but are generally accepted and everyone [in the field] uses.

Evolving technologies that allow economists to gather new types of data and to manipulate millions of data points are just one factor among several that are likely to transform the field in coming years.

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

I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.

Cloud computing, smartphones, social media platforms, and Internet of Things devices have already transformed how we communicate, work, shop, and socialize. These technologies gather unprecedented data streams leading to formidable challenges around privacy, profiling, manipulation, and personal safety.

I think politicians know how to misrepresent data in order to support a political agenda. Politicians and the people that work for them - I should say - are expert at that.

People tend to think that numbers are quite objective, but numbers in economics are not like this. Some economists say they're like sausages: you don't know what they really are until you cut into them.

Not to brag, but I do think I've gotten pretty adept on PowerPoint... except that I can't figure out how to use Excel!

There is a tendency in all of us to ask for better statistical performance. There is a tendency to impose quotas behind which usually lies imposition of pressure to achieve improved statistics.

Letting the facts speak for themselves is an immoral principle when we all know that facts and figures can be selected to prove anything.

The level of ignorance is declining, and the ability to accumulate data and manipulate it for various ends is increasing.

Anybody who hacks into get documents is completely capable of manipulating them.

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.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality - what a joke. In my district, we caught them lying to us about the results of air quality studies in the Barnett Shale. They are playing with the health and safety of our communities, and we are going to tell them that is not acceptable.

Don’t push out figures when facts are going in the opposite direction.

Who knows more about the usage of personal data than Cambridge Analytica?

I've just completed Mike's [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's [Briffa] to hide the decline.

Realize that agendas drive data, not the other way round