Title text:
Numbers can be tricky. On the day of my 110th birthday, I’ll be one day younger than John Tukey was on his.
Transcript:
[Text formatted as a block quote]
“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
The Future of Data Analysis (1962)Caption below the comic:
Happy approximate birthday to John Tukey, author of my favorite statistics quote, who was born 110.000 years ago sometime this week.
Source: https://xkcd.com/3104/
Huh, that kind of gets the juices going, and I’m wondering how much we’ve been trying to make our problems fit the technologies we’ve built, rather than the other way around.
traffic/DUIs (need cars)
poverty/homelessness (need more)
recidivism (need slaves)
To some with only hammers in reach, every problem seems to be a nail.