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...the statistician knows...that in nature there never was a normal distribution, there never was a straight line, yet with normal and linear assumptions, known to be false, he can often derive results which match, to a useful approximation, those found in the real world.

— George E. P. Box

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More quotes by George E. P. Box

Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.

Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987)

All models are wrong; some models are useful.

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.

Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987)

The penalty for scientific irrelevance is, of course, that the statistician's work is ignored by the scientific community.

Science and Statistics (1976)

A man in daily muddy contact with field experiments could not be expected to have much faith in any direct assumption of independently distributed normal errors.

Science and Statistics (1976)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: George E. P. Box (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.