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Georges Monette's Home Page
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"The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard." – John W. Tukey, who, incidentally, coined the terms 'software' and 'bit'.
"The best thing about being a statistician is that you get a license to poke your nose into everyone else's business." – (??)
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning process." – George E. P. Box
"Humanists believe that the world has a fixed number of mysteries, so that when one is solved, our sense of wonder is diminished. Scientists believe that the world has endless mysteries, so that when one is solved, there are always new ones to ponder." – D. O. Hebb quoted by Steven Pinker
"Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise." – John W. Tukey, (1962), "The future of data analysis." Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33, 1-67.
"A bad answer to a good question may be far better than a good answer to a bad question." – a graduate class paraphrasing Tukey's dictum.
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." – James Thurber
"I have a lot of questions – but I don't know what they are." – overheard at the end of what must have been an inspiring lecture
"The worst, i.e., most dangerous, feature of 'accepting the null hypothesis' is the giving up of explicit uncertainty . . . Mathematics can sometimes be put in such black-and-white terms, but our knowledge or belief about the external world never can." – John W. Tukey. (1991). "The Philosophy of Multiple Comparisons." Statistical Science 6, 100--116.
"Where there is no uncertainty there cannot be truth." – Feynman? or Bohr?: a strong endorsement for confidence intervals?
"All models are wrong but some are useful." – George E. P. Box
“At their best, graphics are instruments for reasoning.” – Edward Tufte, www.edwardtufte.com
"An elementary demonstration is one that requires no knowledge – just an infinite amount of intelligence." -- Richard Feynman.
"There are no routine statistical question; only questionable statistical routines." – D.R. Cox
"We at York must give special emphasis to the humanizing of man, freeing him from those pressures which mechanize the mind, which make for routine thinking, which divorce thinking and feeling, which permit custom to dominate intelligence, which freeze awareness of the human spirit and its possibilities..." – Murray G. Ross"It is much more important to be clear than to be correct." – Blair Wheaton
"Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification." – Karl Popper
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." – Mark Twain with attribution to Benjamin Disraeli
"Lies--damned lies--and statistics" – Leonard Henry Courtney with attribution to a "Wise Statesman," possibly Disraeli [see http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/lies.htm]
"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write." – H. G. Wells
"It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without it." – Andrejs Dunkels
"Human History becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." – H. G. Wells
"Data analysis is an aid to thinking and not a replacement for." – Richard Shillington
"Methodology should never be allowed to displace intelligence." – [paraphrased from Lee Wilkinson, I think]
"If you try to estimate everything, you will end up estimating nothing." – [I forget who said this but I'd like to know!]
"Fishing for hypotheses is like throwing a dart at a wall and then drawing a target around it." – Andrée Monette
"When statistics are not based on strictly accurate calculations, they mislead instead of guide. The mind easily lets itself be taken in by the false appearance of exactitude which statistics retain in their mistakes, and confidently adopts errors clothed in the form of mathematical truth." – Alexis de Tocqueville [With the benefit of a few centuries to reflect on this, we appreciate that the accuracy of the calculations is only one of many requirements to ensure that statistics guide and not mislead]
"Causal interpretation of the results of regression analysis of observational data is a risky business. The responsibility rests entirely on the shoulders of the researcher, because the shoulders of the statistical technique cannot carry such strong inferences." – Jan de Leeuw.
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." – Albert Einstein
"Moral indignation is jealousy wearing a halo." – H. G. Wells [what does this have to do with statistics?]
From the Globe & Mail, Social Studies column by Michael Kesterton, September 9, 2003:
Random: Washington-area teenagers have been overheard saying such things as: "Did you see that outfit she was wearing? That was so random!" "Who invited those random kids to this party?" "I never watch the news on TV. It's too, like, random." The adjective seems to mean "serendipitous," but is more value-neutral. "It's actually rather specific the way students use it," English teacher Patrick Welsh tells The Washington Post, adding "the brightest of the bright kids are the ones who tend to use it."
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the
homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of
totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?" - Mahatma
Gandhi (1869 - 1948), "Non-Violence in Peace and War"
"No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from." – Linus van Pelt ( Peanuts )
"Natural Selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability." – Sir Ronald Fisher
"In times of change learners inherit the earth, while the learned
find
themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer
exists." – Eric Hoffer
Answer to the question: what
plot do you (almost) see
twice in each rotation?
The blue plane, which is kept almost on edge as the points rotate, is
the graph of the simple regression of Health on Weight. The ellipse in
the horizontal plane is the data ellipse for the two predictors, Weight
and Height. The blue line in the horizontal plane is the regression
line predicting Height from Weight. The yellow plane is the graph
of
the multiple regression of Health on both Height and Weight.Twice in
every rotation, we look down the intersection of the blue plane and
yellow plane. At that same moment, the blue line in the horizontal
plane points directly at us. A linear shear transformation of the
blue
plane can make it horizontal. Then the horizontal
displacement of
points, to the right or the left of the vertical plane that goes
through the blue line and the intersection of the blue plane and the
yellow plane, is proportional to the residual in the regression of
Height on Weight. The vertical displacement of points above and
below
the blue plane is the residual of Health on Weight. Thus, we are
looking at the Added Variable Plot (or the Partial Residual Leverage
Plot) for the addition of Height to Weight in predicting Health.
So the short anwer is: an Added
Variable Plot.
e-mail:Georges.Monette@mathstat.yorku.ca
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
York University
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada
