Statistical Anomaly Quotes

Beware of averages. The average person has one breast and one testicle.

When asked what he meant by a miracle: Oh, anything with a probability of less than 20%.

I have been luckier than the law of averages should allow. I could never be so lucky again.

Statistics always remind me of fellow who drowned in a river where the average depth was only three feet.

I make such a good statistic, somebody should study me now; somebody's gotta be interested in how I feel, just cause I'm here, and I'm real.

What were the odds that she'd turn away at the same instant the ball came flying her way? And that she'd be holding a soda in a crowd at a volleyball game she didn't even want to watch, in a place she didn't want to be? In a million years, the same thing should probably never happen again. With odds like that, she should have bought a lottery ticket.

According to the statistics, a man eats a prune every twenty seconds. I don't know who this fellow is, but I know where to find him.

Most people are average. Founders are not. Founders' traits seem to have an inverse normal distribution to them.

The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing. Yet here we are, not only existing, but talking about existing. What can account for it? Can every one of those many parameters have been perfect by accident? At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces?

Of course, the entire effort is to put myself Outside the ordinary range Of what are called statistics. A hundred are killed In the outer suburbs. Well, well, I carry on.

Having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

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.

By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.

It as true that normal people couldn't hear Gaspode speak, because dogs don't speak. It's a well know fact. ... Besides, almost all dogs don't talk. Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored.

It is impossible, by the way, when picking one example of anything, to avoid picking one which is atypical in some sense.

One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn't mattered.

I'm interested in the left side of the Bell Curve.

In baseball, you can do something poorly and still get credit. A pitcher could throw a bad ball, the batter hit a screaming line drive, and an outfielder make a fantastic diving catch. Yet, when you look at historical databases, 80% of the time when a ball is struck with that trajectory and velocity, it is a hit.

Statistics say that I'm supposed to be in jail. And I'm not supposed to be alive.

I'm not a role model. I'm an aberation. A statistical anomoly. Following in my footsteps is about the dumbest thing you could ever do.

Each one of us is a statistical impossibility around which hover a million other lives that were never destined to be born.

If you take 10,000 people at random, 9,999 have something in common: their interests in business lie on or near the Earth's surface. The odd one out is an astronomer, and I am one of that strange breed.

On the one hand I'm writing about somebody about whom I say in the book, "The only thing worse than being a statistic is being a statistical anomaly." So I'm writing about a particularly unlucky person. So that's a special type of hell, to be particularly unlucky.