Stats Quotes

stats_woes.txt

"We are struck by the fact that in the social and behavioral sciences,
epidemiology, economics, market research, engineering, and even applied
physics, statistical methods are routinely used to justify causal inferences
from data not obtained from randomized experiments, and sample statistics are
used to predict the effects of policies, manipulations or experiments. Without
these uses the profession of statistics would be a far smaller business. It may
not strike many professional statisticians as particularly odd that the
discipline thriving from such uses assures its audience that they are
unwarranted, but it strikes us as very odd indeed."

Spirtes, 2001