probability assessment Quotes

The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.

Does the logic connect? What are the range of probably outcomes? You want to figure out what those probabilities are and ideally be the House. It's fine to gamble, as long as you're the House. Also, listen to critical feedback, particularly from friends. Generally they will be thinking it but they won't tell you.

Move only when you have an advantage. It's very basic. You have to understand the odds and have the discipline to bet only when the odds are in your favor.

So my antagonist said, "Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?" "No," I said, "I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely." At that he said, "You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?" But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible.

I won’t bet $100 against house odds between now and the grave.

There is exactly the same degree of possibility and likelihood of the existence of the Christian God as there is of the existence of the Homeric god. I cannot prove that either the Christian god or the Homeric gods do not exist, but I do not think that their existence is an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration.

It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.

Deciding under uncertainty is bad enough, but deciding under an illusion of certainty is catastrophic.

Imprudence relies on luck, prudence on method. That gives prudence less edge than it expects.

We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events.

Play the shot you've got the best chance of playing well.

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

Scientists do not believe in fundamental and absolute certainties. For the scientist, certainty is never an end, but a search; not the ordering of certainty, but its exploration. For the scientist, certainty represents the highest degree of probability.

We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.

Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.

Nobody can really guarantee the future. The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them and then make our plans with confidence.

A miscalculation is not negligence, nor prudence a crime. I am a scientist. I base my action or inaction upon probability and evidence. There is a reason we call science a discipline! Inferior minds bolt or build pyres to roast the witches in their midst!

I'm never impossible. The most I ever allow myself is to be somewhat unlikely.

There is no reason to regard God as immune from consideration along the spectrum of probabilities. And there is certainly no reason to suppose that, just because God can be neither proved nor disproved, his probability of existence is 50 per cent.

The best practical advice then is: try to maximize your expected payoff, which is the sum of all payoffs multiplied by probabilities.

It's human nature to find patterns where there are none and to find skill where luck is a more likely explanation (particularly if you're the lucky manager).

The art of drawing conclusions from experiments and observations consists in evaluating probabilities and in estimating whether they are sufficiently great or numerous enough to constitute proofs. This kind of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than it is commonly thought to be. . . .

It is not necessary to have an entire certainty in regard to considerable goods and evils; mere possibility, and much more so probability, is sufficient to induce a reasonable person to deprive himself of some trifling good, and even to suffer some slight evil, with a design of acquiring a far greater good, and avoiding a more troublesome evil.

The entrepreneurial mind-set is that risk is the heightened probability that there is a big range of possible outcomes.