Statistical Fallacy Quotes

The invalid assumption that correlation implies cause is probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning.

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

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

A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures.

A want of the habit of observing and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.

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

The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.

Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there.’

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

One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.

It doesn't take many observations to think you've spotted a trend, and it's probably not a trend at all.

USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you would be perfectly comfortable.

When you try to predict future E.R.A.'s with past E.R.A.'s, you're making a mistake.

All too often when liberals cite statistics, they forget the statisticians' warning that correlation is not causation.

The same past data can confirm a theory and its exact opposite! If you survive until tomorrow, it could mean that either a) you are more likely to be immortal or b) that you are closer to death.

Any statistics can be extrapolated to the point where they show disaster.

An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination.

The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.

It has long been recognized by public men of all kinds. . . that statistics come under the head of lying, and that no lie is so false or inconclusive as that which is based on statistics.

Let people who have to observe sickness and death look back and try to register in their observation the appearances which have preceded relapse, attack or death, and not assert that there were none, or that there were not the right ones. A want of the habit of observing conditions and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.

Correlations are not explanations and besides, they can be as spurious as the high correlation in Finland between foxes killed and divorces.