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All models are wrong; some models are useful.

— 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)

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)

Statistical criteria should (1) be sensitive to change in the specific factors tested, (2) be insensitive to changes, of a magnitude likely to occur in practice, in extraneous factors.

G.E.P Box (1955)

All George E. P. Box quotes →

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

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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.