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%% New quotes Nov 2019
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## Statistics

From carefully compiled statistical facts more may be learned [about] the moral nature of Man than can be gathered from all the accumulated experiences of the preceding ages.
--- Henry Thomas Buckle, A History of Civilization in England, 1857/1898, p. 17

Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.
--- H.G. Wells, Mankind in Making, 1903

%source: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-source-of-the-H-G-Wells-quote-Statistical-thinking-will-one-day-be-as-necessary-for-efficient-citizenship-as-the-ability-to-read-and-write
% Quote actually  from the presidential address in 1951 of mathematical statistician Samuel S. Wilks (1906 - 1964) to the American Statistical Association found in JASA,Vol. 46, No. 253., pp. 1-18.

Statistical accounts are to be referred to as a dictionary by men of riper years, and by young men as a grammar, to teach them the relations and proportions of different statistical subjects, and to imprint them on the mind at a time when the memory is capable of being impressed in a lasting and durable manner, thereby laying the foundation for accurate and valuable knowledge.
--- William Playfair, The Statistical Breviary  (1801), 5-6.

Geography is only a branch of statistics, a knowledge of which is necessary to the well-understanding of the history of nations, as well as their situations relative to each other.
--- William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas, p. 29

No study is less alluring or more dry and tedious than statistics, unless the mind and imagination are set to work, or that the person studying is particularly interested in the subject; which last can seldom be the case with young men in any rank of life.
--- William Playfair, The Statistical Breviary (1801), p. 16

## Data visualization
### Pictures

DIAGRAMS are of great utility for illustrating certain questions of vital statistics by conveying ideas on the subject through the eye, which cannot be so readily grasped when contained in figures.
--- Florence Nightingale, Mortality of the British Army, 1857

To give insight to statistical information it occurred to me, that making an appeal to the eye when proportion and magnitude are concerned, is the best and readiest method of conveying a distinct idea.
--- William Playfair, The Statistical Breviary (1801), p. 2


Regarding numbers and proportions, the best way to catch the imagination is to speak to the eyes.
--- William Playfair, Elemens de statistique, Paris, 1802, p. XX.

The aim of my carte figurative is to convey promptly to the eye the relation not given quickly by numbers requiring mental calculation.
--- Charles Joseph Minard

Information that is imperfectly acquired, is generally as imperfectly retained; and a man who has carefully investigated a printed table, finds, when done, that he has only a very faint and partial idea of what he has read; and that like a figure imprinted on sand, is soon totally erased and defaced.
--- William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas (p. 3), 1786

Since the aim of exploratory data analysis is to learn what seems to be, it should be no surprise that pictures play a vital role in doing it well.
--- J. W. Tukey & P. Tukey (1965)

There is nothing better than a picture for making you think of questions you had forgotten to ask (even mentally).
--- J. W. Tukey & P. Tukey (1965)

Functional visualizations are more than innovative statistical analyses and computational algorithms. They must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character-based languages used worldwide between humans.
--- Matt Woolman, Digital Information Graphics

## History

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots
--- Marcus Garvey

The bushels of rings taken from the fingers of the slain at the battle of Cannae, above two thousand years ago, are recorded; ... but the bushels of corn produced in England at this day, or the number of the inhabitants of the country, are unknown, at the very time that we are debating that most important question, whether or not there is sufficient substance for those who live in the kingdom.
--- William Playfair, The Statistical Breviary (1801), p. 7-8

### Time

How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.
--- St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

## Data visualization
### Geometry

Every measurable thing, except numbers, is imagined in the manner of continuous quantity. Therefore, for the mensuration of such a thing, it is necessary that points, lines and surfaces, or their properties be imagined. For in them, as the Philosopher has it, measure or ratio is initially found, while in other things it is recognized by similarity as they are being referred to by the intellect to the geometrical entities.
--- Nicole Oresme, The Latitude of Forms

% quoted in: http://www.homeofbob.com/science/teacherTools/graphing/info.html

%Although indivisible points, or lines, are non-
%existent, still it is necessary to feign them mathematically for the measures of
%things and for the understanding of their ratios. Therefore, every intensity
%which can be acquired successively ought to be imagined by a straight line
%perpendicularly erected on some point of the space or subject of the intensible
%thing, e.g. a quality. For whatever ratio is found to exist between intensity
%and intensity of the same kind, a similar ratio is found to exist between line
%and line, and vice versa. ... Therefore, the measure of intensities can be
%fittingly imagined as the measure of lines.
%

## Computing

Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
--- John von Neumann

## Science

With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.
--- John von Neumann, quoted by Freeman Dyson

% Attributed to von Neumann by Enrico Fermi, as quoted by Freeman Dyson in "A
% meeting with Enrico Fermi" in Nature 427 (22 January 2004) p. 297

The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.
-- St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
