#probability

Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters. ↗

— John Major

#clever #could #defect #half #many

The importance of information is directly proportional to its improbability. ↗

— Jerry Pournelle

#directly proportional #importance #improbability #information #proportional

The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong. ↗

— Andy Rooney

#anytime #chance #get #getting #probability

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability. ↗

— Max Frisch

#believe #fate #formulae #i #i am

We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty. ↗

— Nate Silver

#comfortable #more #must #probability #uncertainty

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#derived #facts #obtained #only #principles

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#being #contented #existing #fact #here

The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most of all, we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability and total improbability of our connected minds. That way we can keep open all the options, as we have in the past. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#agency #any #connected #dangerous #entrusted

The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#astonishing #bolt #cell #cooled #derived

If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#assigned #behaves #fundamental #gives #histories