Quotes on writing with statistics

What writers & others say

“Smoking causes 67 percent of all statistics.”

— Anonymous

“Statistics are like bikinis; they reveal a good deal that is both interesting and instructive, but they usually conceal what is really vital.”

— Anonymous

“Two-thirds of all statistics are made up on the spot.”

— Anonymous

“Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average.”

— Anonymous

“Did you know that 87.166253% of all statistics claim a precision of results that is not justified by the method employed?”

— Anonymous

“Numbers, when they’re large enough, simply blow our mental fuses. People often find anything with an ‘-illion’ on the end incomprehensible. They make a useless mental shortcut: ‘lots of zeros = big.’”

— Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, authors, The Numbers Game

“Great clots of numbers dropped into a story with a steam shovel create a wall of abstraction.”

— William Blundell, author, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing

“Any economic forecast that includes a decimal point suggests a level of precision that isn’t really possible.”

— Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg, producers of Planet Money

“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”

— William E. Deming, American management consultant, engineer and statistician

“We do not expect reporters to be mathematical geniuses. But we do expect them to sidestep their mind-numbing fear of mathematics long enough to ask, ‘Does this make sense?’ ‘What would I conclude from these numbers?”

— A.K. Dewdney, author of 200% of Nothing

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

— Benjamin Disraeli,19th century British prime minister

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

— Albert Einstein, genius

“A long presentation was being made that was overloaded with dull, detailed statistics. Number after number was read off. When the droning presenter finally paused for breath, [CEO of Goldman Sachs Sidney] Weinberg jumped up, waving his papers in mock triumph, to call out ‘Bingo!’”

— Charles Ellis, author, The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs

“They’ve done studies, you know. 60% of the time it works, every time.”

— Brian Fantana, a character played by Paul Rudd on “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” on his favorite cologne, Sex Panther

“Two is not equal to three, not even for large values of two.”

— Grabel’s Law

“Numbers bog down the text. Loading a story up with numbers almost guarantees low readership.”

— Jack Hart, managing editor, The Oregonian

“Few members of our audience turn to The Oregonian because they’re craving a good story problem.”

— Jack Hart, managing editor, The Oregonian

“If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of 10 it will.”

— Paul Harvey, American radio broadcaster

“Big numbers fuzz our brains, and that is just as true in business as it is in public policy.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“Speaking in ‘millions’ and ‘billions’ is like your second year of Spanish: You’ve memorized the vocabulary, but it’s hard to think in the language.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“The challenge of communicating the significance of numbers — and acting on them — is to find ways to bring them closer to people’s day-to-day experience.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“Some commentators have tried various ways to put [numbers into] perspective — if you laid those bills end to end, how many times would they circle the earth? (If there’s one thing people have a keen intuition about, it’s the earth’s circumference, right?)”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“How can you relate to this monstrous figure in the daily-life zone”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“We’ve all heard stats like this one (which is real): 27 billion disposable diapers are used each year in the United States — enough to stretch all the way to the moon and back seven times. What to say about this? For starters, it would be a funny joke to play on the astronauts.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“A good statistic is one that aids a decision or shapes an opinion. For a stat to do either of those, it must be dragged within the everyday. That’s your job — to do the dragging.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“In our world of billions and trillions, that can be a lot of manual labor. But it’s worth it: A number people can grasp is a number that can make a difference.”

— Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts — for support rather than for illumination.”

— Andrew Lang, Scottish poet, folklorist, biographer, translator, novelist and scholar

“Treating 2004 dollars the same as 1981 dollars isn’t much different from treating dollars the same as rupees. The fact that 10 is a bigger number than 9 doesn’t make 10 rupees worth more than $9; nor does it make $10 from 2004 worth more than $9 from 1981.”

— David Leonhardt, The New York Times economics correspondent

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

— David Letterman, host, “Late Show with David Letterman”

“Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

— Aaron Levenstein, American academic

“To us, business stories were people stories. Why? Because people ran businesses, people worked for businesses, people bought things from businesses, people sold supplies to businesses, etc. Sure, numbers mattered, but how did those numbers affect people? How were people’s lives changed for good or ill by the numbers on the balance sheet?”

— Joe Marren, assistant professor of communications at Buffalo State College

“In November, when New York City Comptroller William Thompson released a study purporting to show that New Yorkers purchased more than $23 billion in counterfeit goods each year, The Times repeated the analysis as if it were credible. Quick arithmetic would have demonstrated that $23 billion would work out to roughly $8,000 per city household, a number ludicrous on its face.”

— Daniel Okrent, The New York Times ombudsman

“Numbers without context, especially large ones with many zeros trailing behind, are about as intelligible as vowels without consonants.”

— Daniel Okrent, The New York Times ombudsman

“The real goal of visual thinking is to make the complex understandable by making it visible — not by making it simple.”

— Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin

“Every time you feel your fingers reaching for the top row of the keyboard, ask, ‘What’s it like?’”

Chip Scanlan, senior scholar, Poynter Institute

“Your presentation will stand or fall on the quality, relevance and integrity of your content. If your numbers are boring, it’s too late. If your images aren’t relevant, putting them in four-color won’t help. Design can never rescue failed content. The best design can do is not screw up good content”

— Edward Tufte, the da Vinci of data

“Just because the writers are down the hall from the designers doesn’t mean you should separate their work as well.”

— Edward Tufte, the da Vinci of data

“Information is absorbed in direct proportion to its vividness.”

— Diane West, president and co-founder of 2Connect

“With one foot in a bucket of ice water, and one foot in a bucket of boiling water, you are, on the average, comfortable.”

— WorkJoke.com

“I asked a statistician for her phone number… and she gave me an estimate.”

— WorkJoke.com