John Tukey famous quotes

04-05-2025

The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.
-- John Tukey

#Force #Expected #Values
This is my favorite part about analytics: Taking boring flat data and bringing it to life through visualization.
-- John Tukey

#Data #Boring #My Favorite
When communicating results to non-technical types there is nothing better than a clear visualization to make your point.
-- John Tukey

#Results #Type #Communicate
An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem.
-- John Tukey

#Science #Answers #Problem
It's better to solve the right problem approximately than to solve the wrong problem exactly.
-- John Tukey

#Risk #Management #Problem
The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.
-- John Tukey

#Data #Desire #Statistics
Be approximately right rather than exactly wrong.
-- John Tukey
If we are going to make a mark (key 21), it might as well be a meaningful one.
-- John Tukey

#Meaningful #Work #Keys
Numerical quantities focus on expected values, graphical summaries on unexpected values.
-- John Tukey

#Focus #Unexpected #Summary
There is no data that can be displayed in a pie chart, that cannot be displayed BETTER in some other type of chart.
-- John Tukey

#Data #Pie #Type
In a single sentence the moral is: admit that complexity always increases, first from the model you fit to the data, thence to the model you use to think about and plan about the experiment and its analysis, and thence to the true situation.
-- John Tukey

#Thinking #Data #Simplicity
Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.
-- John Tukey

#Answers #Made
The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard.
-- John Tukey

#Play #Backyards #Statistics
One of my favorite ways to easily review results is Google Analytics Dashboards. Don't have dashboards set up? I can help you set one up.
-- John Tukey

#Google #Way #Dashboards
Visualization is often used for evil - twisting insignificant data changes and making them look meaningful. Don't do that crap if you want to be my friend. Present results clearly and honestly. If something isn't working - those reviewing results need to know.
-- John Tukey

#Meaningful #Data #Evil
I know of no person or group that is taking nearly adequate advantage of the graphical potentialities of the computer.
-- John Tukey

#Groups #Adequate #Computer

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