John Tukey
John Tukey
John Wilder Tukey ForMemRSwas an American mathematician best known for development of the FFT algorithm and box plot. The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distribution, the Tukey test of additivity, and the Teichmüller–Tukey lemma all bear his name...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth16 June 1915
CountryUnited States of America
John Tukey quotes about
answers statistics made
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.
adequate groups computer
I know of no person or group that is taking nearly adequate advantage of the graphical potentialities of the computer.
meaningful work keys
If we are going to make a mark (key 21), it might as well be a meaningful one.
views able way
To be able to say that "if we change our point of view in the following way ... things are simpler" is always a gain.
asking world different
All we know about the world teaches us that the effects of A and B are always different-in some decimal place-for any A and B. Thus asking "are the effects different?" is foolish.
world economics fractions
In a world in which the price of calculation continues to decrease rapidly, but the price of theorem proving continues to hold steady or increase, elementary economics indicates that we ought to spend a larger and larger fraction of our time on calculation.
thinking data simplicity
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.
meaningful data evil
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.
Be approximately right rather than exactly wrong.
focus unexpected summary
Numerical quantities focus on expected values, graphical summaries on unexpected values.
results type communicate
When communicating results to non-technical types there is nothing better than a clear visualization to make your point.
data boring my-favorite
This is my favorite part about analytics: Taking boring flat data and bringing it to life through visualization.
risk management problem
It's better to solve the right problem approximately than to solve the wrong problem exactly.
pie data type
There is no data that can be displayed in a pie chart, that cannot be displayed BETTER in some other type of chart.