Probability Theory Quotes

#1. I failed math twice, never fully grasping probability theory. I mean, first off, who cares if you pick a black ball or a white ball out of the bag? And second, if you're bent over about the color, don't leave it to chance. Look in the damn bag and pick the color you want.

Janet Evanovich

#2. An aphorism is an extreme synthesis of thesis and antithesis, theory and practice, it's a mixture of intuition and observation, hypothesis and illusions of certainty and probability, history and stupidity.

William C. Brown

#3. The quantum theory is based on the idea that there is a probability that all possible events, no matter how fantastic or silly, might occur.

Michio Kaku

#4. Democracy cannot function or survive without a sufficient medium by which citizens remain informed and engaged in public policy debates.

Nancy Snow

#5. A scientist worthy of a lab coat should be able to make original discoveries while wearing a clown suit, or give a lecture in a high squeaky voice from inhaling helium. It is written nowhere in the math of probability theory that one may have no fun.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

#6. I'd gladly trade the world
And all of its gold,
To see you safe in this fragile life.

Maddy Kobar

#7. You know that, according to quantum theory, if two particles collide with enough energy you can, in principle, with an infinitesimal probability, produce two grand pianos.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

#8. In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory.

Martin Gardner

#9. But the stupidity which is common to all such "explanations" is, of course, simply that of proceeding as though the merits of a theory - such things as truth, or probability, or explanatory power - could not possibly be among the reasons for its currency.

David Stove

#10. I may finally call attention to the probability that the association of paternal and maternal chromosomes in pairs and their subsequent separation during the reducing division as indicated above may constitute the physical basis of the Mendelian law of heredity.

Walter S. Sutton

#11. At a purely formal level, one could call probability theory the study of measure spaces with total measure one, but that would be like calling number theory the study of strings of digits which terminate.

Terence Tao

#12. Probability theory is nothing more than common sense reduced to calculation. -1819

Pierre-Simon Laplace

#13. The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which of times they are unable to account.

Pierre-Simon Laplace

#14. You can't talk to thermodynamics and you can't pray to probability theory. You

Eliezer Yudkowsky

#15. On any pure theory of causality or statistical probability, organization would be completely improbable without the external aid of a divine organizer.

Lewis Mumford

#16. Entropy theory, on the other hand, is not concerned with the probability of succession in a series of items but with the overall distribution of kinds of items in a given arrangement.

Rudolf Arnheim

#17. Maybe we should teach schoolchildren probability theory and investment risk management.

Andrew Lo

#18. On the one hand, a central part of this theory is the introduction of probability measures which describe what associations and deductions we are likely to make.

Ulf Grenander

#19. The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.

Benoit Mandelbrot

#20. Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation.

Pierre-Simon Laplace

#21. I was disappointed in Niagara - most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

Oscar Wilde

#22. You human beings think that yoga is in some way going to make everything you want to happen, work out. You are going to be able to avoid what you don't want. That is not yoga. That is desire and aversion.

Frederick Lenz

#23. Say 'Dodgers' and people know you're talking about baseball. Say 'Braves' and they ask, 'What reservation?' Say 'Reds' and they think of communism. Say 'Padres' and they look around for a priest.

Tommy Lasorda

#24. Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside.

Ludwig Van Beethoven

#25. If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic.

David Stove

#26. It was our use of probability theory as logic that has enabled us to do so easily what was impossible for those who thought of probability as a physical phenomenon associated with "randomness". Quite the opposite; we have thought of probability distributions as carriers of information.

Edwin Thompson Jaynes

#27. If skeptic can weakly force E, then he can force E.

Glenn Shafer

#28. One of the most striking and fundamental things about probability theory is that it leads to an understanding of the otherwise strange fact that events which are individually capricious and unpredictable can, when treated en masse, lead to very stable average performances.

Warren Weaver