“As with a knife in a surgeon’s hands, it can save a life, but it could also kill someone, in the hands of a crook.”
— Sastry Pantula, Dean of the College of Science, Oregon State University
This quote caught my eye in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article on “About 88% Through Year, 100% of Statisticians Find Field ‘Sexy’”—a recap of Statistics2013, which pays homage to the 300th anniversary of Jacob Bernoulli’s landmark book The Art of Conjecturing.*
My interest in statistics stems from a belief that one should live by what you see, not what supposedly should be. In other words, let the data speak. I have little patience for speculation based only on personal opinion, unless it comes from one who clearly possesses great subject matter knowledge—even then I would like to see peer-reviewed research supporting the contentions. The converse of this is being greatly off-put by people who obviously do not know what they are talking about using statistics as a weapon. This is crooked (as noted by Prof Pantula).
But never mind this dark side of statistics, it’s time to celebrate them as Gianluca Massimo and his Italian friends (including students in Statistical Sciences at the University of Padua) did in this ‘bromantical’ music video.
*For a scholarly review and historical context, see “The Significance of Jacob Bernoulli’s Ars Conjectandi for the Philosophy of Probability Today” by Glenn Shafer of Rutgers University.