Post

This is a cousin of Ocam's Razor

Has Tukey joined yet?

John Tukey, one of the heroes of my book, “Understanding Signals”.

Better to be about right than exactly wrong.

You can always follow up an approximate answer to a vague question with another now slight less vague question to get a slightly more accurate answer. Over time you achieve scientific kaizen - approximation to the asymptote of perfection.

There is a definite art-form in answering questions that were never asked (but should have been), or answering questions that were asked but sidestepping the question that should have been asked. Made a career out of it :)

Tukey Tukey

He's approximately my favorite Thanksgiving bird.

Wise words, asking the right questions is everything.

Sent this to my son who, today, started his first day of class in probability theory at Cal.

whoa, he predicted LLMs!

This is by no means limited to statistics ! Finding the right question to answer is the most difficult problem in most disciplines. So much time can be wasted working on a precise answer for the wrong question !

That quote would have been helped by parentheses around the middle two clauses.

This applies to so much more than just statistics.

Lotus 1-2-3 would disagree so Excel still does.