63 Quotes About Probability

The randomness of the universe is a source of awe and amazement to us, and we tend to make a lot of assumptions about it. After all, we’ve been watching our world unfold for billions of years, so why wouldn’t it be predictable? But despite how much we know about the certainty of the cosmos, there are still things that happen that are impossible to predict. It’s impossible to know what will happen tomorrow or next week. The only thing we can do is to make predictions based on our knowledge.

All statistics have outliers.
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All statistics have outliers. Nenia Campbell
Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here...
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Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement. Lewis Thomas
The concept of randomness and coincidence will be obsolete when...
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The concept of randomness and coincidence will be obsolete when people can finally define a formulation of patterned interaction between all things within the universe. Toba Beta
Statistics, likelihoods, and probabilities mean everything to men, nothing to...
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Statistics, likelihoods, and probabilities mean everything to men, nothing to God. Richelle E. Goodrich
Playing is more than the act of judging the possibility...
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Playing is more than the act of judging the possibility of defeat or victory, playing is the probability of hope we will have victory. Pushpa Rana
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Only someone who isn’t a fool stands a chance of not being bothered by being deemed a fool by a fool. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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What luck has gave you will probably leave you. Amit Kalantri
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I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. Bertrand Russell
I believe that we do not know anything for certain,...
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I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably. Christiaan Huygens
Any impossibility turned into a possibility is magic.
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Any impossibility turned into a possibility is magic. Amit Kalantri
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You were born a winner, a warrior, one who defied the odds by surviving the most gruesome battle of them all - the race to the egg. And now that you are a giant, why do you even doubt victory against smaller numbers and wider margins? The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved. Suzy Kassem
â€â€¹It's Hard, Not to Fail, but, there is Always a...
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â€â€¹It's Hard, Not to Fail, but, there is Always a Chance of Success. Of course, there is No Chance of Success, if You didn't Try. Vineet Raj Kapoor
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Today is an ephemeral ghost.. A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not "exist."In mundane terms, it marks a "leap" in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up! But this day holds another secret–it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razor edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability.. A day of unlocked potential. Will you or won't you? Should you or shouldn't . Vera Nazarian
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Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours.. .. James D. Watson
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Among all the occurrences possible in the universe the a priori probability of any particular one of them verges upon zero. Yet the universe exists; particular events must take place in it, the probability of which (before the event) was infinitesimal. At the present time we have no legitimate grounds for either asserting or denying that life got off to but a single start on earth, and that, as a consequence, before it appeared its chances of occurring were next to nil.. Destiny is written concurrently with the event, not prior to it.. The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. Is it surprising that, like the person who has just made a million at the casino, we should feel strange and a little unreal?. Jacques Monod
Probability theory is nothing more than common sense reduced to...
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Probability theory is nothing more than common sense reduced to calculation. -1819 PierreSimon Laplace
The more energy taken, the less energy that is left...
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The more energy taken, the less energy that is left for us to implement our goals and the smaller the probability of realization of our innate potential Sunday Adelaja
If nature has taught us anything it is that the...
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If nature has taught us anything it is that the impossible is probable Ilyas Kassam
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The fact that you have just buried your parent or parents and/or sibling or siblings does not make you less likely to die today. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
As the sun sets, something in me rises! Do you...
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As the sun sets, something in me rises! Do you think it could be my soul? I feel it's a big probability! Jasleen Kaur Gumber
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Conventional wisdom nor scientific, mathematical prove of randomness in life could do nothing to deter human's curiosity for the unknown, however small the chance of a positive outcome maybe. Vann Chow
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Peace shouldn't be an option, it must be the objective, peace shouldn't be a possibility, it must be the purpose. Amit Kalantri
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The mind is not designed to grasp the laws of probability, even though the laws rule the universe. Steven Pinker
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You have a very high probability of your quote and your name being distributed, posted, and shared around the world! Ken Poirot
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Hard work increases the probability of serendipity. Ken Poirot
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Between the streams of probability & possibility, lies the timeless, spaceless realm where time gets created! Vishwanath S J
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The future is certain. It is just not known. Johnny Rich
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The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place. The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible. Unknown
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We either base our 'confidence' on reason (evident probabilities, past experience, competence, etc) or we base our beliefs on faith, which is blind by definition. Faith is the most dishonest position it is possible to have, because it is an assertion of stoic conviction that is assumed without reason and defended against all reason. If you have to believe it on faith, you have no reason to believe it at all. AronRa
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Based on the law of probability Everything is possible because The sheer existence of possibility Confirms the existence Of impossibility. Dejan Stojanovic
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Stop living the life with possibilities and probabilities, live the life with certainties. Amit Kalantri
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Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6, 000, 000, 000 throws with a regular six-sided die the die will come up proximately 1 , 000, 000, 000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come approximately up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable. But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term "probability" includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification. Cf. Ernst Mally's Probability and Law, Hans Reichenbach The theory Probability, Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica, von Mises' Probability, Statistics and Truth . Max Frisch
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Predictability is not how things will go, but how they can go. Raheel Farooq
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If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. Vannevar Bush
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Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities. George Eliot
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One of the recent arguments from design, that based on the so-called fine-tuning life of some fundamental physical constants, founders on the following objections: an extremely small prior probability merited by the God of theism in light — if that is the right word — of the Problem of Evil; the fact that it is not unreasonable to place a substantial probability on the hypothesis that a future theory will fix those values; and the sheer incoherence of computations of the ‘chances’ of fine-tuning were there no fine-tuner. Colin Howson
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The Coin of Life example: Say you have a coin with heads on one side and tails on the other side. One side would mean good and the other bad, based on your interpretation or bet of which side of the coin represents a win for you. However, you can't decide the outcome and the coin flips many times throughout your life. Finding balance is flipping the coin in such a way that neither of the sides is of greater importance to you, but if the coin lands on the middle bit, you realize that the space between what you consider good or bad is so small and the probability of landing there is also incredibly small without continuous practice. However, no matter the outcome, you choose to accept the coin as it is, with both sides, and appreciate the importance of both in your life. For the coin of life has meaning and value no matter what side it lands on. It's each individual's choice whether to bet on the outcome or not, but ultimately your coin of life will be spent somehow. . Unknown
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Extremely unlikely events occur every moment and it is not a priori unthinkable that the evolution of life should be due to mere chance than that a particular order in a pack of cards should result from mechanical shuffling. Unknown
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Natural selection is not only a parsimonious, plausible and elegant solution; it is the only workable alternative to chance that has ever been suggested. Intelligent design suffers from exactly the same objection as chance. It is simply not a plausible solution to the riddle of statistical improbability. And the higher the improbability, the more implausible intelligent design becomes. Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin. Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance. Richard Dawkins
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It is highly probable that we choose our posture, not our problems. T.F. Hodge
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Further, the same Arguments which explode the Notion of Luck, may, on the other side, be useful in some Cases to establish a due comparison between Chance and Design: We may imagine Chance and Design to be, as it were, in Competition with each other, for the production of some sorts of Events, and many calculate what Probability there is, that those Events should be rather be owing to the one than to the other. Abraham De Moivre
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Occasionally I glanced at the big blue cradle of civilization hanging in the sky, remembered for the fiftieth or sixtieth or one hundredth time that none of this had any right to be happening, and reminded myself for the fiftieth or sixtieth or one hundredth time that the only sane response was to continue carrying the tune. AdamTroy Castro
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A distinguished writer [Siméon Denis Poisson] has thus stated the fundamental definitions of the science:' The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place.'' The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible' (equally like to happen). From these definitions it follows that the word probability, in its mathematical acceptation, has reference to the state of our knowledge of the circumstances under which an event may happen or fail. With the degree of information which we possess concerning the circumstances of an event, the reason we have to think that it will occur, or, to use a single term, our expectation of it, will vary. Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave neither room nor demand for a theory of probabilities. George Boole
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Accidents happen. That's what everyone says. But in a quantum universe there are no such things as accidents, only possibilities and probabilities folded into existence by perception. J. Michael Straczynski
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The 50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong. Andy Rooney
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And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced–too eagerly in my view–that the question of God's existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical deduction that the hypothesis of God's existence, and the hypothesis of his non-existence, have exactly equal probability of being right. Richard Dawkins
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Time did exist here, in small amounts (well some of the time) — and there were feint eddies and currents of time here, things that were barely tangible. Feint forces of the universe they were, nearly indiscernible from the nothingness like a warm breeze on a hot summer night. How long he had been here, he knew not — but he was slowly learning to master these barely tangible waves like a new surfer with one foot on the sandy beach and the other on a shiny new board of Hatred. Revenge splashed around his feet like the cold waves of the ocean of Time. Nearby, two other inmates collided with each other, bounced apart spread-eagled and spiraled off into the distance in infinite slowness. The Wetsuit of Insanity clung to his spiritual body, isolating him from the timelessness that seemed to exist here. A wind of Change blew at him from behind and he pushed off from the beach with iron determination and a mental clarity hereto before unknown to him. Something in the microcosm that didn’t even have a name went ‘bling’ and against all the laws of probability, Brad Xyl opened his eyes. Christina Engela
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If skeptic can weakly force E, then he can force E. Glenn Shafer
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I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure. George Gordon Byron
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While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. Robert S. Mulliken
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Blind nature will nearly always select the most probable, but man can let the most improbable become actual. Hans Jonas
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If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we’d have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they’re erratic. People do crazy things that don’t make sense. Sara Sheridan
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Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the odds of an event with a fixed probability increase or decrease depending on recent occurrences of the event is called the gambler's fallacy. For example, if Kerrich landed, say, 44 heads in the first 100 tosses, the coin would not develop a bias towards the tails in order to catch up! That's what is at the root of such ideas as "her luck has run out" and "He is due." That does not happen. For what it's worth, a good streak doesn't jinx you, and a bad one, unfortunately , does not mean better luck is in store. . Leonard Mlodinow
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While most of us are comfortable acknowledging that luck plays a role in what we do, we have difficulty assessing its role after the fact. Once something has occurred and we can put together a story to explain it, it starts to seem like the outcome was predestined. Statistics don't appeal to our need to understand cause and effect, which is why they are so frequently ignored or misinterpreted. Stories, on the other hand, are a rich means to communicate precisely because they emphasize cause and effect. . Michael J. Mauboussin
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So the probability I'm not there..., but you want I to be there opps so sorry I can't be but you can make a discussion with my books and if you want more just P.M. - That's how it works and It will work. Deyth Banger
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The greatest risk is not taking any. Tim Fargo
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The greatest risk is not taking one. Tim Fargo
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I may finally call attention to the probability that the association of paternal and maternal chromosomes in pairs and their subsequent separation during the reducing division as indicated above may constitute the physical basis of the Mendelian law of heredity. Walter S. Sutton
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There’s no such thing as probability, " she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. "Things turn out the way they do. Johnny Rich
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Anything at all is possible. Some things are unlikely. Some things will never happen. But they always could, at any time. Ashly Lorenzana
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Being nice is state of "Probability", not a state of "possibility". Deyth Banger
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What was a shadow, after all, but a shape in the moving world reduced to a projection of possibilities? Yoon Ha Lee