Statistical Sayings And Quotes

We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?

He looks at her and smiles. "You're sort of dangerous, you know?" She stares at him. "Me?" "Yeah," he says sitting back. "I'm way too honest with you.

What are you really studying?" He leans back to look at her. "The statistical probability of love at first sight." "Very funny," she says. "What is it really?" "I'm serious." "I don't believe you." He laughs, then lowers his mouth so that it's close to her ear. "People who meet in airports are seventy-two percent more likely too fall for each other than people who meet anywhere else.

And in August it will be fifty-two years together.” “Wow,” Oliver says. “That’s amazing.” “I wouldn’t call it amazing,” the woman says, blinking. “It’s easy when you find the right person.

That’s the way these things work, kiddo,” he says. “Love isn't supposed to make sense. It's completely illogical.

I can't believe you're here," she says, her voice soft. "I can't believe you found me." "You found me first," he says, and when he leans to kiss her, it's slow and sweet and she knows that this will be the one she always remembers. Because while the other two kisses felt like endings, this one is unquestionably a beginning.

You know what they say," Dad said. "If you love something set it free." "What if he doesn't come back?" "Something do, somethings don't," he said, reaching to tweak her nose. "I'll always come back to you anyway." "You don't light up," Hadley said, but Dad only smiled. "I do when I'm with you.

You know what they say, if you love something, set it free.

But just as she turns to walk away she hears him behind her, the word like the opening of some door, like an ending and a beginning, like a wish. "Wait," he says, and so she does.

You," he says, laughing in spite of himself, "are mad as a hatter.

When you're on the other side of it," she says, "fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes.

I’m just saying that statistically, a psychopath is more likely to end up as a CEO than a serial killer.

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns- the ones we don't know we don't know.

Hadley grabs the laminated safety instructions from the seat pocket in front of her and frowns at the cartoon men and women who seem weirdly delighted to be bailing out of a series of cartoon planes. Beside her, Oliver stifles a laugh, and she glances up again. “What?” “I’ve just never seen anyone actually read one of those things before,” “Well,” she says, “then you’re very lucky to be sitting next to me.” “Just in general?” She grins. “Well, particularly in case of an emergency.” “Right,” he says. “I feel incredibly safe. When I’m knocked unconscious by my tray table during some sort of emergency landing, I can’t wait to see all five-foot-nothing of you carry me out of here.

Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,' Arkadian Porpirych says. 'What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks.

You do not know me, but I am a juvenile delinquent. I do not trust authority figures, I probably will not graduate from high school, and statistics say my present rowdiness and vandalism will likely lead to more serious crimes. I am a dangerous fellow, and I am causing mayhem in this store. [...] There. I have now shamelessly destroyed the symmetry of this shelf, undoing hours of labor by underpaid store employees. If you could see me, you would be frightened.

How long till you get her?" "Not long," she says. "Not long at all." He sighs again. "Good." "But dad?" "Yeah?" "Can you remind me where I'm going?

Once," he says, "I was flying to California on the Fourth of July." She turns her head, just slightly. "It was a clear night, and you could see all the little fireworks displays along the way, these tiny flares going off below, one town after another.

This house is about two dictionaries away from caving in,' she'd say, 'and you're buying duplicates?

I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!

When you’re on the other side of it,” she says, “fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes. Just like when you’re young and in love, a seven-hour plane ride can seem like a lifetime.

But no escape route." "Ah," he says. "So you're looking for an escape route." Hadley nods. "Always.

Even the not saying can balloon into something bigger than words themselves.

Beside her, Oliver is craning his neck to read the signs for customs, already thinking about the next thing, already moving on. Because that's what you do in planes. You share an armrest with someone for a few hours. You exchange stories about your life, an amusing anecdote or two, maybe even a joke. You comment on the weather and remark about the terrible food. And then you say goodbye.

The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average but does not give us a picture of their empirical reality. While reflecting an indisputable aspect of reality, it can falsify the actual truth in a most misleading way. This is particularly true of theories which are based on statistics. The distinctive thing about real facts, however, is their individuality. Not to put too fine a point on it, once could say that the real picture consists of nothing but exceptions to the rule, and that, in consequence, absolute reality has predominantly the character of irregularity.

Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician.

In the interest of ultimate honesty,” Celine cut in, “I’m pretty sure that everyone present would appreciate it if you two got a room.” “I wouldn’t,” Dean grumbled. “I am unbothered by displays of physical and emotional intimacy,” Sloane volunteered. “The nuances and statistics underlying courtship behavior are quite fascinating.” The edges of Celine’s lips quirked upward as she met Sloane’s gaze. “You don’t say.” Sloane frowned. “I just did.

Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, decribes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. He reports the poll's findings: * Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why * Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals * Only one in five said they had a clear "line of sight" between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals * Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals * Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for Then, Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics. He says, "If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.

Yeah," Violet says from where she's stooped on the floor. "But those weren't family tears." Whitney rakes her fingers through Hadley's hair. "What were they, then." "Those were boy tears," Violet says with a smile.

True," he says. "But I'm able to supplement it with my wealth of British intelligence and charm." "Right," Hadley says. "Charm. When do I get to see some of that?" He twists his mouth up at the corners. "Didn't some guy help carry your suitcase earlier?" "Oh yeah," she says, tapping a finger against her chin. "That guy. He was great. I wonder where he went?

Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.

The fact is, no man can ever know whether a child is his. A woman knows a child is hers, but a man can never know whether it is his, not even with a DNA test. A DNA test can only tell you if the child is not yours, but if your DNA matches, it only indicates ‘a high statistical probability’ that it is your child. As they say, ‘Motherhood is a biological fact, fatherhood is a sociological fiction.’ It is this knowledge that creates permanent anxiety for patriarchy, an anxiety that requires women’s sexuality to be strictly policed.

J. E. Littlewood, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote about the law of truly large numbers in his 1986 book, "Littlewood's Miscellany." He said the average person is alert for about eight hours every day, and something happens to the average person about once a second. At this rate, you will experience 1 million events every thirty-five days. This means when you say the chances of something happening are one in a million, it also means about once a month. The monthly miracle is called Littlewood's Law.

When you're on the other side of it," she says, "fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes." She tips her head back and swallows the pill. "Just like when you're young and in love, a seven-hour plane ride can seem like a lifetime.

Hadley falls into step beside her. 'That's it? A good feeling?' 'That's it,' she says. 'I think it's meant to be.' 'I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way, Hadley says with a frown, but Violet only smiles. 'What if it does?

I'm not sure I even believe in marriage," Hadley says and he looks surprised. "Aren't you on your way to a wedding?" "Yeah," she says with a nod. "But that's what I mean." He looks at her blankly. "It shouldn't be this big fuss, where you drag everyone halfway across the world to witness your love. If you want to share your life together, fine. But it's between two people, and that should be enough. Why the big show? Why rub it in everyone's faces?" Oliver runs a hand along his jaw, obviously not quite sure what to think. "It sounds like its weddings you don't believe in," he says finally. "Not marriage." "I'm not such a big fan of either at the moment." "I don't know," he says. "I think they're kind of nice." "They're not," she insists. "They're all for show. You shouldn't need to prove anything if you really mean it. It should be a whole lot simpler than that. It should mean something." "I think it does," Oliver says quietly. "It's a promise." "I guess so," she says, unable to keep the sigh out of her voice. "But not everyone keeps that promise." she looks over toward the woman, still fast asleep. "Not everyone makes it fifty-two years, and if you do, it doesn't matter that you once stood in front of all those people and said that you would. The important part is that you had someone to stick by you all that time. Even when everything sucked.

As a kid, I couldn't sleep without this ratty stuffed elephant," she explains, not sure what made her think of it now. Maybe it's that she'll be soon seeing her dad again, or maybe it's just the plane keying up beneath her, prompting a childish wish for her old security blanket. [Oliver]"I'm not sure that counts" "Clearly you've never met Elephant" He laughs, "Did you come up with that name all by yourself?" "Damn right," she says

There’s a quote from Stalin,” he says. “‘A single death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.’ Can you imagine seven billion of anything? I have trouble doing it. It pushes the limits of our ability to comprehend. And that’s exactly why they did it. Like running up the score in football. You played football, right? It isn’t about destroying our capability to fight so much as crushing our will to fight.

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.

Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit. but having perused the various tests available that they use to determine whether you're manic depressive. OCD, schizo-affective, schizophrenic, or whatever, I'm surprised the number is that low. So I have gone through a bunch of the available tests, and I've taken questions from each of them, and assembled my own psychological evaluation screening which I thought I'd share with you. So, here are some of the things that they ask to determine if you're mentally disordered 1. In the last week, have you been feeling irritable? 2. In the last week, have you gained a little weight? 3. In the last week, have you felt like not talking to people? 4. Do you no longer get as much pleasure doing certain things as you used to? 5. In the last week, have you felt fatigued? 6. Do you think about sex a lot? If you don't say yes to any of these questions either you're lying, or you don't speak English, or you're illiterate, in which case, I have the distinct impression that I may have lost you a few chapters ago.

So," the woman asks, digging through her purse and emerging with a pair of foam earplugs, "how did you two meet?" They exchange a quick glance. "Believe it or not," Oliver says, "it was in an airport." "Oh how wonderful!" she exclaims, looking positively delighted. "And how did it happen?" "Well" he begins, sitting up a bit taller, "I was being quite gallant, actually, and offered to help her with her suitcase. And then we started talking and one thing lead to another..." Hadley grins "And he's been carrying my suitcase ever since." "It's what an true gentlemen would do," Oliver says with an exaggerated modesty. "Especially the really gallant ones.

I once heard Jerry Yang, the cofounder of Yahoo!, quote a senior Chinese government official as saying, "Where people have hope, you have a middle class." I think this is a very useful insight. The existence of large, stable middle classes around the world is crucial to geopolitical stability, but middle class is a state of mind, not a state of income. That's why a majority of Americans always describe themselves as "middle class," even though by income statistics some of them wouldn't be considered as such. "Middle class" is another way of describing people who believe that they have a pathway out of poverty or lower-income status toward a higher standard of living and a better future for their kids.

The guns-for-everyone advocates hate that statistic, and dispute it, but as Bill Clinton likes to say, it’s not opinion. It’s arithmetic, honey.

When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42 percent of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY?

Convincing - and confident - disciplines, say, physics, tend to use little statistical backup, while political science and economics, which have never produced anything of note, are full of elaborate statistics and statistical “evidence” (and you know that once you remove the smoke, the evidence is not evidence).

For a long time they just stay there like that, as still as the statues in the garden. And when he gives her no sign --- no gestures of welcome, no indication of need--Hadley swallows hard and comes to a decision. But just as she turns to walk away she hears him behind her, the word like the opening of some door, like an ending and a beginning, like a wish. "Wait," he says, and so she does.

Hadley grabs the laminated safety instructions from the seat pocket in front of her and frowns at the cartoon men and women who seem weirdly delighted to be bailing out of a series of cartoon planes. Beside her, Oliver stifles a laugh, and she glances up again. "What?" "I've just never seen anyone actually read one of those things before." "Well," she says, "then you're very lucky to be sitting next to me.

Well," he begins, sitting up a bit taller, "I was being quite gallant, actually, and offered to help with her suitcase. And then we started talking and one thing led to another...." Hadley grins. "And he's been carrying my suitcase ever since." "it's what any true gentleman would do," Oliver says with exaggerated modesty. "Especially the really gallant ones." The old woman seems pleased by this, her face folding into a map of tiny wrinkles. "And here you both are." Oliver smiles. "Here we are.

Ah." Ax nodded. "She does not understand how menacing we are." He tapped her on the shoulder. "You do not know me," he said, "but I am a juvenile delinquent. I do not trust authority figures, I probably will not graduate from high school, and statistics say my present rowdiness and vandalism will likely lead to more serious crimes. I am a dangerous fellow and I am causing mayhem in this store." He reached behind her and pulled three jars of baby food from the top shelf. Shoved them behind a box of macaroni. Shuffled the Chess Whizzed in front of the Marshmallow Fluff. Tossed a bag of lady's shavers onto a bag of hamburger buns. "There. I have now shamelessly destroyed the symmetry of this shelf, undoing hours of labor by underpaid store employees. If you could see me, you would be frightened." "If she could see you, she'd have you committed," Marco muttered.

I guess so,” she says, unable to keep the sigh out of her voice. “But not everyone keeps that promise.” She looks over toward the woman, still fast asleep. “Not everyone makes it fifty-two years, and if you do, it doesn’t matter that you once stood in front of all those people and said that you would. The important part is that you had someone to stick by you all that time. Even when everything sucked.

I fire again and again, and none of the bullets come close. "Statistically speaking," the Erudite boy next to me-his name is Will-says, grinning at me, "you should have hit the target at least once by now, even by accident." He is blond, with shaggy hair and a crease between his eyebrows. "Is that so," I say without inflection. "Yeah," he says. "I think you're actually defying nature." I grit my teeth and turn toward the target, resolving to at least stand still. If I can't muster the first task they give us,how will I ever make it through stage one? I squeeze the trigger,hard, and this time I'm ready for the recoil.It makes my hand jump back,but my feet stay planted.A bullet hole appears at the edge of the target,and I raise an eyebrow at Will. "So you see,I'm right.The stats don't lie," he says. I smile a little.

Statistics compiled from what people say may be worse than useless, if they lead to a belief that those numbers convey a reality that can be relied on for serious decision-making about social policies.

I was going back and reading Marconi’s last book again, and there’s this part that always gets me. He points out that the amount of the universe a human can experience is statistically, like, zero percent. You’ve got this huge universe, trillions of trillions of miles of empty space between galaxies, and all a human can perceive is a little tunnel a few feet wide and a few feet long in front of our eyes. So he says we don’t really live in the universe at all, we live inside our brains. All we can see is like a blurry little pinhole in a blindfold, and the rest is filled in by our imagination. So whatever we think of the world, whether you think the world is cruel or good or cold or hot or wet or dry or big or small, that comes entirely from inside your head and nowhere else.

Good," Violet says. "Because I'll expect you to come back over when Monty and I get married." "Monty?" Hadley asks, staring at her. She tries to successfully to recall if she's even seen them speak to each other. "You guys are engaged?" "Not yet," Violet says as she starts walking toward the dinning room. "But you don't look so gobsmacked. I've got a good feeling about it." Hadley falls into step beside her. "That's it? A good feeling?" "That's it," she says. "I think it's meant to be.

Not being able to see something, even if it’s in front of your eyes. Purposefully making yourself blind, just because you’re afraid of seeing too much.” “Are you saying that statistics graduate education is inadequate?

Coping with any death is traumatic; suicide compounds the anguish because we are forced to deal with two traumatic events at the same time. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the level of stress resulting from the suicide of a loved one is ranked as catastrophic–equivalent to that of a concentration camp experience.

Above them, one of the blackened television screens brightens, and there's an announcement about the in-flight movie. It's an animated film about a family of ducks, one that Hadley's actually see, and when Oliver groans, shes about to deny the whole thing. But then she twists around in her seat and eyes him critically. "There's nothing wrong with ducks," she tells him, and he rolls his eyes. "Talking ducks?" Hadley grins. "They sing, too." "Don't tell me," he says. "You've already seen it." She holds up two fingers. "Twice." "You do know it's meant for five-year-olds, right?" "Five- to eight-year-olds, thank you very much." "And how old are you again?" "Old enough to appreciate our web-footed friends." "You," he says, laughing in spite of himself, "are a mad as a hatter." "Wait a second," Hadley says in mock horror. "Is that a reference to a...cartoon?" No, genius. It's a reference to a famous work of literature by Lewis Carroll. But once again, I can see how well that American education is working for you.

the elephant in the room.” That we won’t say, simply, that it is men who are violent. It is men who take their violence out on masses of others. School shootings are carried out by young men. Mass murders. Gang warfare, murder-suicides and familicides and matricides and even genocides: all men. Always men. “Every commonly available domestic violence and official general violence statistic, and every anecdotal account about domestic and all other kinds of violence throughout the United States and around the world, point clearly to the fact that men almost monopolize all sectors of violence perpetration,” Sinclair wrote.

...the amount of the universe a human can experience is statistically, like, zero percent. You’ve got this huge universe, trillions of trillions of miles of empty space between galaxies, and all a human can perceive is a little tunnel a few feet wide and a few feet long in front of our eyes. So he says we don’t really live in the universe at all, we live inside our brains. All we can see is like a blurry little pinhole in a blindfold, and the rest is filled in by our imagination. So whatever we think of the world, whether you think the world is cruel or good or cold or hot or wet or dry or big or small, that comes entirely from inside your head and nowhere else.

I’m not sure what prime numbers have to do with anything,” I say in a gentle voice. “Prime numbers have to do with everything. But to clarify, that’s what I imagine falling in love is like and then staying married. You start out as low twin primes and as time goes on, if you manage to defy the statistical odds and not get divorced, you become like those rarer twin primes, still only separated by two. That’s an amazing feat.” “How romantic

this mad psycho tells everyone to get into a field and says I’m going to pick one of you just one of you out of all of you to die and everyone’s looking around thinking it’s so unlikely to be me because there’s thousands of us so statistically it’s completely unlikely and the psycho walks up and down looking at everyone and when he gets near me he hesitates and he smiles and then he points right at me and says you’re the one and the shock that it’s me and yet of course it’s me why wouldn’t it be I knew all along

Now, I’m not saying that we don’t need rules in society. But the question of who makes the rules and on what basis becomes supremely important. Will the rule-making flow from the matrix of voluntary exchange based on the ethic of serving others through private enterprise? Or will the rules be made and enforced by people wearing guns and bulletproof vests with a license to shock or kill based on minor annoyances?

The thing is, it’s not like half this country suddenly became Islamophobes because of any single event. But the lies, the rhetoric calling refugees rapists and criminals, the fake news, the false statistics, all gave those well-meaning people who say they’re not bigots cover to vote for a man who openly tweeted his hatred of us on a nearly daily basis.

You say you can be honest with me?” Hadley asks after a moment, addressing Oliver’s rounded shoulders, and he twists to look at her. “Fine. Then talk to me. Be honest.” “About what?” “Anything you want. To her surprise, he kisses her then. Not like the kiss at the airport, which was soft and sweet and full of farewell. This kiss is something more urgent, something more desperate; he presses his lips hard against hers, and Hadley closes her eyes and leans in, kissing him back until, just as suddenly, he breaks away again, and they sit staring at each other. “That’s not what I meant,” Hadley says, and Oliver gives her a crooked smile. “You said to be honest. That was the most honest thing I’ve done all day.

Ah, marriage. The kind of union we have affects our children infinitely more than the schools we put them in, the activities we sign them up for, or the church we take them to. Our kids are learning relational habits by osmosis, and statistics say they’ll likely imitate what they witness at home.

Do you think,” she says, the words emerging thickly, “we might have used up all our conversation last night?” “Not possible,” says Oliver, and the way he says it, his mouth turned up in a smile, his voice full of warmth, unwinds the knot in Hadley’s stomach. “We haven’t even gotten to the really important stuff yet.” “Like what?” she asks, trying to arrange her face in a way that disguises the relief she feels. “Like what’s so great about Dickens?” “Not at all,” he says. “More like the plight of koalas. Or the fact that Venice is sinking.” He pauses, waiting for this to register, and when Hadley says nothing, he slaps his knee for emphasis. “Sinking! The whole city! Can you believe it?” She frowns in mock seriousness. “That does sound pretty important.” “It is,” Oliver insists. “And don’t even get me started on the size of our carbon footprint after this trip. Or the difference between crocodiles and alligators. Or the longest recorded flight of a chicken.” “Please tell me you don’t actually know that.” “Thirteen seconds,” he says, leaning forward to look past her and out the window. “This is a total disaster. We’re nearly to Heathrow and we haven’t even properly discussed flying chickens.

To what end the ‘world’ exists, to what end ‘man­kind’ exists, ought not to concern us at all for the moment except as objects of humour: for the presumptuousness of the little human worm is the funniest thing at present on the world’s stage; on the other hand, do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a ‘to this end’, an exalted and noble ‘to this end’ . Perish in pursuit of this and only this - I know of no better aim of life than that of perishing, animae magnae prodigus, in pursuit of the great and the impossible. If, on the other hand, the doctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all concepts, types and species, of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal - doctrines which I consider true but deadly - are thrust upon the people for another generation with the rage for instruction that has by now become normal, no one should be surprised if the people perishes of petty egoism, ossification and greed, falls apart and ceases to be a people; in its place sys­tems of individualist egoism, brotherhoods for the rapacious exploitation of the non-brothers, and similar creations of utilitarian vulgarity may perhaps appear in the arena of the future. To prepare the way for these creations all one has to do is to go on writing history from the standpoint of the masses and seeking to derive the laws which govern it from the needs of these masses, that is to say from the laws which move the lowest mud- and clay-strata of society. The masses seem to me to deserve notice in three respects only: first as faded copies of great men produced on poor paper with worn-out plates, then as a force of resistance to great men, finally as instruments in the hands of great men; for the rest, let the Devil and statistics take them!

I have always been taught to be proud of being Latina, proud of being Mexican, and I was. I was probably more proud of being a "label" than of being a human being, that's the way most of us were taught. Since the day we enter this world we were a label, a number, a statistic, that's just the way it is. Now if you ask me what race I am, like Zlata, I'll simply say, "I'm a human being.

Me?” Dean couldn’t have sounded more incredulous if he’d tried. “What else is there to say?” What was there to say? “I don’t care.” My breath was still ragged from running. I was saying this wrong. “Your father—it doesn’t change who you are.” “What I am,” he corrected. “And yes, it does. Why don’t you go ask Sloane what the statistics say about psychopathy and heredity? And then why don’t you ask her what they say about growing up in an environment where it’s the only thing you know.” “I don’t care about the statistics,” I said. “We’re partners. We work together. You knew I was going to find out. You could have told me.” “We’re not partners.” The words hurt me—and he meant for them to.

Just to clear the air, let's note first of all that whatever an intelligence test measures it is not quite the same thing as we usually mean by intelligence. It neglects such important things as leadership and creative imagination. It takes no account of social judgement or musical or artistic or other aptitudes, to say nothing of such personality matters as diligence and emotional balance.

He did not believe in luck at all, good or bad. Gamblers believed in luck, and he was not a gambler. Never had been, never would be. John Henry Holliday believed in mathematics, in statistics, in the computation of odds. Fifty-two cards in a deck. Make it easy. Say it's fifty. Any card has a 2 percent chance of being dealt from a full deck. Keep track of what's out. Adjust the probabilities as the hand progresses.

I met this one man, he was saying that this is because we place a low value on human life. That it’s an Asiatic fatalism. A person who sacrifices himself doesn’t feel himself to be a unique individual. He experiences a longing for his role in life. Earlier he was a person without a text, a statistic. He had no theme, he served as the background. And now suddenly he’s the main protagonist. It’s a longing for meaning.

Maybe it's ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you're alive for a while, and then you realize you're going to die, and that's such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers and the only answer is that the world must die with you. Sure, the world seems crazy now. But wouldn't it seem just as crazy if you were alive when they sacrificed peasants, when people were born into slavery, when they killed first-born sons, crucified priests, fed people to lions, burned them on stakes, when they intentionally gave people smallpox or syphilis, when they gassed them, burned them, dropped atomic bombs on them, when entire races tried to wipe other races off the planet? Yes, we've ruined the planet and melted the ice caps and depleted the ozone, and we're always finding new ways to kill one another. Yeah, we're getting cancer at an alarming rate and suicides are at an all-time high, and, sure, we've got people so depressed they take a drug that could turn them into pasty-skinned animals who go around all night dancing and having sex and eating stray cats and small dogs and squirrels and mice and very, very rarely- the statistics say you're more likely to be killed by lightning- a person. But this is the Apocalypse? Fuck you! It's always the Apocalypse. The world hasn't gone to shit. The world is shit. All I'd asked was that it be better managed.

Here is your law enforcement and media question of the day: Was the TV show COPS real or BS? It might have been real incidents, but it wasn't really all that real. They edited the episodes to make it appear as if black people were committing fewer crimes. That is what the show creator John Langley said in a 2009 interview in response to people who were unhappy his long-running reality show, COPS, was showing too many black people getting arrested. What irritates me sometimes is critics still watch and say, 'Oh look, they misrepresent people of color.' That's absolutely not true. To the contrary, I show more white people than statistically what the truth is in terms of street crime..It's just the reverse. And I do that intentionally, because I do not want to contribute to negative stereotypes, said Langley, the show's producer, in 2009.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet. These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights. Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

He points out that the amount of the universe a human can experience is statistically, like, zero percent. You’ve got this huge universe, trillions of trillions of miles of empty space between galaxies, and all a human can perceive is a little tunnel a few feet wide and a few feet long in front of our eyes. So he says we don’t really live in the universe at all, we live inside our brains. All we can see is like a blurry little pinhole in a blindfold, and the rest is filled in by our imagination. So whatever we think of the world, whether you think the world is cruel or good or cold or hot or wet or dry or big or small, that comes entirely from inside your head and nowhere else.

In the statistical gargon used in psychology, p refers to the probability that the difference you see between two groups (of introverts and extroverts, say, or males and females) could have occurred by chance. As a general rule, psychologists report a difference between two groups as 'significant' if the probability that it could have occurred by chance is 1 in 20, or less. The possibility of getting significant results by chance is a problem in any area of research, but it's particularly acute for sex differences research. Supppose, for example, you're a neuroscientist interested in what parts of the brain are involved in mind reading. You get fifteen participants into a scanner and ask them to guess the emotion of people in photographs. Since you have both males and females in your group, you rin a quick check to ensure that the two groups' brains respond in the same way. They do. What do you do next? Most likely, you publish your results without mentioning gender at all in your report (except to note the number of male and female participants). What you don't do is publish your findings with the title "No Sex Differences in Neural Circuitry Involved in Understanding Others' Minds." This is perfectly reasonable. After all, you weren't looking for gender difference and there were only small numbers of each sex in your study. But remember that even if males and females, overall, respond the same way on a task, five percent of studies investigating this question will throw up a "significant" difference between the sexes by chance. As Hines has explained, sex is "easily assessed, routinely evaluated, and not always reported. Because it is more interesting to find a difference than to find no difference, the 19 failures to observe a difference between men and women go unreported, whereas the 1 in 20 finding of a difference is likely to be published." This contributes to the so-called file-drawer phenomenon, whereby studies that do find sex differences get published, but those that don't languish unpublished and unseen in a researcher's file drawer.

One winter night during one of the many German air raids on Moscow in World War II, a distinguished Soviet professor of statistics showed up in his local air-raid shelter. He had never appeared there before. “There are seven million people in Moscow,” he used to say. “Why should I expect them to hit me?” His friends were astonished to see him and asked what had happened to change his mind. “Look,” he explained, “there are seven million people in Moscow and one elephant. Last night they got the elephant.

Steris,” he whispered, “I’ve been considering how to proceed once we decide how to infiltrate. I’ve thought about bringing you in with us, and I just don’t see that it’s feasible. I think it would be best if you stayed and watched the horses.” “Very well.” “No, really. Those are armed soldiers. I can’t even fathom how I’d feel if I brought you in there and something happened. You need to stay out here.” “Very well.” “It isn’t subject to—” Wax hesitated. “Wait. You’re all right with this?” “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. “I barely have any sense of where to point a gun, and have hardly any capacity for sneaking—that’s really quite a scandalous talent if you think about it, Lord Waxillium. While I do believe that people tend to be safest when near you, riding into an enemy compound is stretching the issue. I’ll stay here.” Wax grinned in the darkness. “Steris, you’re a gem.” “What? Because I have a moderately healthy sense of self-preservation?” “Let’s just say that out in the Roughs, I was accustomed to people always wanting to try things beyond their capacity. And they always seemed determined to do it right when it was the most dangerous.” “Well, I shall endeavor to stay out of sight,” Steris said, “and not get captured.” “I doubt you need to worry about that all the way out here.” “Oh, I agree,” she said. “But that is the sort of statistical anomaly that plagues my life, so I’ll plan for it nonetheless.

There was but one question he left unasked, and it vibrated between his lines: if gross miscalculations of a person’s value could occur on a baseball field, before a live audience of thirty thousand, and a television audience of millions more, what did that say about the measurement of performance in other lines of work? If professional baseball players could be over-or undervalued, who couldn’t? Bad as they may have been, the statistics used to evaluate baseball players were probably far more accurate than anything used to measure the value of people who didn’t play baseball for a living.

The left and right sides of the brain also process the imprints of the past in dramatically different ways.2 The left brain remembers facts, statistics, and the vocabulary of events. We call on it to explain our experiences and put them in order. The right brain stores memories of sound, touch, smell, and the emotions they evoke. It reacts automatically to voices, facial features, and gestures and places experienced in the past. What it recalls feels like intuitive truth—the way things are. Even as we enumerate a loved one’s virtues to a friend, our feelings may be more deeply stirred by how her face recalls the aunt we loved at age four.3 Under ordinary circumstances the two sides of the brain work together more or less smoothly, even in people who might be said to favor one side over the other. However, having one side or the other shut down, even temporarily, or having one side cut off entirely (as sometimes happened in early brain surgery) is disabling. Deactivation of the left hemisphere has a direct impact on the capacity to organize experience into logical sequences and to translate our shifting feelings and perceptions into words. (Broca’s area, which blacks out during flashbacks, is on the left side.) Without sequencing we can’t identify cause and effect, grasp the long-term effects of our actions, or create coherent plans for the future. People who are very upset sometimes say they are “losing their minds.” In technical terms they are experiencing the loss of executive functioning. When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. But because their left brain is not working very well, they may not be aware that they are reexperiencing and reenacting the past—they are just furious, terrified, enraged, ashamed, or frozen. After the emotional storm passes, they may look for something or somebody to blame for it. They behaved the way they did way because you were ten minutes late, or because you burned the potatoes, or because you “never listen to me.” Of course, most of us have done this from time to time, but when we cool down, we hopefully can admit our mistake. Trauma interferes with this kind of awareness, and, over time, our research demonstrated why.

The Conservative may ask the following questions: If words and their meaning can be manipulated or ignored to advance the Statist’s political and policy preferences, what then binds allegiance to the Statist’s words? Why should today’s law bind future generations if yesterday’s law does not bind this generation? Why should judicial precedent bind the nation if the Constitution itself does not? Why should any judicial determination based on a judge’s notion of what is “right” or “just” bind the individual if the individual believes the notion is wrong and unjust? Does not lawlessness beget lawlessness? Or is not the Statist really saying that the law is what he says it is, and that is the beginning and end of it? And if judges determine for society what is right and just, and if their purpose is to spread democracy or liberty, how can it be said that the judiciary is coequal with the executive or legislative branch?

Those in the grip of the methodological inhibition often refuse to say anything about modern society unless it has been through the fine little mill of The Statistical Ritual. It is usual to say that what they produce is true even if unimportant. I do not agree with this; more and more I wonder how true it is. I wonder how much exactitude, or even pseudo-precision, is here confused with 'truth'; and how much abstracted empiricism is taken as the only 'empirical' manner of work.

When I argue with devout statists, sometimes other voluntaryists tell me that I'm wasting my time, opining that a particular statist is never going to "get it." I often respond by saying that that's rarely my intention. Most of the time, when I argue with statists, the goal is for ME to learn more about the mentality and psychology of authoritarian indoctrination, and to hopefully help any SPECTATORS--whether statist or anarchist--learn something from the exchange. (Both of those goals can be achieved even if the statist continues to be a lunk-headed dupe.) Earlier today, a funny but possibly profound analogy came to mind about this: When I argue with "true believer" devout statists, I'm not being a doctor trying to heal an ailing patient; I'm being a coroner, doing an AUTOPSY on a patient who is already beyond any hope of saving, in the hopes that I, and anyone observing, may learn more about the "disease" of statism, in order to better understand the nature of it, and possibly prevent others from experiencing a similar fate.

A modern fad which has gained widespread acceptance amongst the semi-educated who wish to appear secular is the practice of meditation. They proclaim with an air of smug superiority, ‘Main mandir-vandir nahin jaata, meditate karta hoon (I don’t go to temples or other such places, I meditate).’ The exercise involves sitting lotus-pose (padma asana), regulating one’s breathing and making your mind go blank to prevent it from ‘jumping about like monkeys’ from one (thought) branch to another. This intense concentration awakens the kundalini serpent coiled at the base of the spine. It travels upwards through chakras (circles) till it reaches its destination in the cranium. Then the kundalini is fully jaagrit (roused) and the person is assured to have reached his goal. What does meditation achieve? The usual answer is ‘peace of mind’. If you probe further, ‘and what does peace of mind achieve?’, you will get no answer because there is none. Peace of mind is a sterile concept which achieves nothing. The exercise may be justified as therapy for those with disturbed minds or those suffering from hypertension, but there is no evidence to prove that it enhances creativity. On the contrary it can be established by statistical data that all the great works of art, literature, science and music were works of highly agitated minds, at times minds on the verge of collapse. Allama Iqbal’s short prayer is pertinent: Khuda tujhey kisee toofaan say aashna kar dey Keh terey beher kee maujon mein iztiraab naheen (May God bring a storm in your life, There is no agitation in the waves of your life’s ocean.)

I now think that was distanced me from Tricia and from the Rape Crisis Center was their use of generalities. I did not want to be one of a group or compared with others. It somehow blindsided my sense that I was going to survive. Tricia prepared me for failure by saying that it would be okay if I failed. She did this by showing me that the odds out there were against me. But what she told me, I didn't want to hear. In the face of dismal statistics regarding arrest, prosecution, and even full recovery for the victim, I saw no choice but to ignore the statistics. I needed what gave me hope, like being assigned a female assistant district attorney, not the news that the number of rape prosecutions in Syracuse for that calendar year had been nil.

There's a liberal story that limited opportunities, and barriers, lead to employment problems and criminal records, but then there's another story that has to do with norms, behaviors, and oppositional culture. You can't prove the latter statistically, but it still might be true.' Holzer thinks that both arguments contain truth and that one doesn't preclude the other. Fair enough. Suffice it to say, though, that the evidence supporting structural inequality is compelling. In 2001, a researcher sent out black and white job applicants in Milwaukee, randomly assigning them a criminal record. The researcher concluded that a white man with a criminal record had about the same chance of getting a job as a black man without one. Three years later, researchers produced the same results in New York under more rigorous conditions.

This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called "literary economics," as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the "new economic history." A man does what he can, and in the more elegant - one is tempted to say "fancier" - techniques I am, as one who received his formation in the 1930s, untutored. A colleague has offered to provide a mathematical model to decorate the work. It might be useful to some readers, but not to me. Catastrophe mathematics, dealing with such events as falling off a height, is a new branch of the discipline, I am told, which has yet to demonstrate its rigor or usefulness. I had better wait. Econometricians among my friends tell me that rare events such as panics cannot be dealt with by the normal techniques of regression, but have to be introduced exogenously as "dummy variables." The real choice open to me was whether to follow relatively simple statistical procedures, with an abundance of charts and tables, or not. In the event, I decided against it. For those who yearn for numbers, standard series on bank reserves, foreign trade, commodity prices, money supply, security prices, rate of interest, and the like are fairly readily available in the historical statistics.

The obvious cure for the tragic shortcomings of human intuition in a high-tech world is education. And this offers priorities for educational policy: to provide students with the cognitive tools that are most important for grasping the modern world and that are most unlike the cognitive tools they are born with. The perilous fallacies we have seen in this chapter, for example, would give high priority to economics, evolutionary biology, and probability and statistics in any high school or college curriculum. Unfortunately, most curricula have barely changed since medieval times, and are barely changeable because no one wants to be the philistine who seems to be saying that it is unimportant to learn a foreign language, or English literature, or trigonometry, or the classics. But no matter how valuable a subject may be, there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and a decision to teach one subject is also a decision not to teach another one. The question is not whether trigonometry is important, but whether it is more important than statistics; not whether an educated person should know the classics, but whether it is more important for an educated person to know the classics than to know elementary economics. In a world whose complexities are constantly challenging our intuitions, these trade-offs cannot responsibly be avoided.

The Loneliness of the Military Historian Confess: it's my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene, I do it in private and nobody sees but the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you: women should not contemplate war, should not weigh tactics impartially, or evade the word enemy, or view both sides and denounce nothing. Women should march for peace, or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery, spit themselves on bayonets to protect their babies, whose skulls will be split anyway, or,having been raped repeatedly, hang themselves with their own hair. There are the functions that inspire general comfort. That, and the knitting of socks for the troops and a sort of moral cheerleading. Also: mourning the dead. Sons,lovers and so forth. All the killed children. Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. In my dreams there is glamour. The Vikings leave their fields each year for a few months of killing and plunder, much as the boys go hunting. In real life they were farmers. The come back loaded with splendour. The Arabs ride against Crusaders with scimitars that could sever silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse's neck and a hunk of armour crashes down like a tower. Fire against metal. A poet might say: romance against banality. When awake, I know better. Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters, or none that could be finally buried. Finish one off, and circumstances and the radio create another. Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently to God all night and meant it, and been slaughtered anyway. Brutality wins frequently, and large outcomes have turned on the invention of a mechanical device, viz. radar. True, valour sometimes counts for something, as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right - though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition, is decided by the winner. Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags of guts to save their comrades. I can admire that. But rats and cholera have won many wars. Those, and potatoes, or the absence of them. It's no use pinning all those medals across the chests of the dead. Impressive, but I know too much. Grand exploits merely depress me. In the interests of research I have walked on many battlefields that once were liquid with pulped men's bodies and spangled with exploded shells and splayed bone. All of them have been green again by the time I got there. Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day. Sad marble angels brood like hens over the grassy nests where nothing hatches. (The angels could just as well be described as vulgar or pitiless, depending on camera angle.) The word glory figures a lot on gateways. Of course I pick a flower or two from each, and press it in the hotel Bible for a souvenir. I'm just as human as you. But it's no use asking me for a final statement. As I say, I deal in tactics. Also statistics: for every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.

There is no greater example in apologetics than the apostle Paul speaking at Mars Hill. The irony of the talk Paul gave is in the difference in reaction the Easterner has when reading Paul’s address to that of a Westerner. The Easterner is thrilled at how the apostle wove the message starting from where the listeners were to bring them to where he was in his thinking. The average Westerner is quick to point out that few of his hearers responded. Such an attitude says volumes about why the church in the West has been so intellectually weak. To those in the West, the bigger the number of respondents, the more replicated the technique. The bigger the statistic, the greater the success. Westerners are enamored by size, largesse, number of hands raised, and so on. When the sun has set on these reports, we seem rather dismayed when statistics show the quality of the life of the believer is no different from that of the unbeliever.

And I thought how many satisfied, happy people really do exist in this world! And what a powerful force they are! Just take a look at this life of ours and you will see the arrogance and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak. Everywhere there's unspeakable poverty, overcrowding, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy and stupid lies... And yet peace and quiet reign in every house and street. Out of fifty thousand people you won't find one who is prepared to shout out loud and make a strong protest. We see people buying food in the market, eating during the day, sleeping at night-time, talking nonsense, marrying, growing old and then contentedly carting their dead off to the cemetery. But we don't hear or see those who suffer: the real tragedies of life are enacted somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is calm and peaceful and the only protest comes from statistics - and they can't talk. Figures show that so many went mad, so many bottles of vodka were emptied, so many children died from malnutrition. And clearly this kind of system is what people need. It,s obvious that the happy man feels contented only because the unhappy ones bear their burden without saying a word: if it weren't for their silence, happiness would be quite impossible. It's a kind of mass hypnosis. Someone ought to stand with a hammer at the door of every contented man, continually banging on it to remind him that there are unhappy people around and that however happy he may be at that time, sooner or later life will show him its claws and disaster will overtake him in the form of illness, poverty, bereavement and there will be no one to hear or see him. But there isn't anyone holding a hammer, so our happy man goes his own sweet way and is only gently ruffled by life's trivial cares, as an aspen is ruffled by the breeze. All's well as far as he's concerned

In 90% of cases, you can start with one of the two most effective ways to open a speech: ask a question or start with a story. Our brain doesn’t remember what we hear. It remembers only what we “see” or imagine while we listen. You can remember stories. Everything else is quickly forgotten. Smell is the most powerful sense out of 4 to immerse audience members into a scene. Every sentence either helps to drive your point home, or it detracts from clarity. There is no middle point. If you don’t have a foundational phrase in your speech, it means that your message is not clear enough to you, and if it’s not clear to you, there is no way it will be clear to your audience. Share your failures first. Show your audience members that you are not any better, smarter or more talented than they are. You are not an actor, you are a speaker. The main skill of an actor is to play a role; to be someone else. Your main skill as a speaker is to be yourself. People will forgive you for anything except for being boring. Speaking without passion is boring. If you are not excited about what you are talking about, how can you expect your audience to be excited? Never hide behind a lectern or a table. Your audience needs to see 100% of your body. Speak slowly and people will consider you to be a thoughtful and clever person. Leaders don’t talk much, but each word holds a lot of meaning and value. You always speak to only one person. Have a conversation directly with one person, look him or her in the eye. After you have logically completed one idea, which usually is 10-20 seconds, scan the audience and then stop your eyes on another person. Repeat this process again. Cover the entire room with eye contact. When you scan the audience and pick people for eye contact, pick positive people more often. When you pause, your audience thinks about your message and reflects. Pausing builds an audiences’ confidence. If you don’t pause, your audience doesn’t have time to digest what you've told them and hence, they will not remember a word of what you've said. Pause before and after you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. After you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. Speakers use filler words when they don’t know what to say, but they feel uncomfortable with silence. Have you ever seen a speaker who went on stage with a piece of paper and notes? Have you ever been one of these speakers? When people see you with paper in your hands, they instantly think, “This speaker is not sincere. He has a script and will talk according to the script.” The best speeches are not written, they are rewritten. Bad speakers create a 10 minutes speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Great speakers create a 5 minute speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Explain your ideas in a simple manner, so that the average 12-year-old child can understand the concept. Good speakers and experts can always explain the most complex ideas with very simple words. Stories evoke emotions. Factual information conveys logic. Emotions are far more important in a speech than logic. If you're considering whether to use statistics or a story, use a story. PowerPoint is for pictures not for words. Use as few words on the slide as possible. Never learn your speech word for word. Just rehearse it enough times to internalize the flow. If you watch a video of your speech, you can triple the pace of your development as a speaker. Make videos a habit. Meaningless words and clichés neither convey value nor information. Avoid them. Never apologize on stage. If people need to put in a lot of effort to understand you they simply won’t listen. On the other hand if you use very simple language you will connect with the audience and your speech will be remembered.

Girls mature faster than boys, cost more to raise, and statistics show that the old saw about girls not knowing about money and figures is a myth. Girls start to outspend boys before puberty—and they manage to maintain this lead until death or an ugly credit manager, whichever comes first. Males are born with a closed fist. Girls are born with the left hand cramped in a position the size of an American Express card. Whenever a girl sees a sign reading, “Sale, Going Out of Business, Liquidation,” saliva begins to form in her mouth, the palms of her hands perspire and the pituitary gland says, “Go, Mama.” In the male, it is quite a different story. He has a gland that follows a muscle from the right arm down to the base of his billfold pocket. It's called “cheap.” Girls can slam a door louder, beg longer, turn tears on and off like a faucet, and invented the term, “You don't trust me.” So much for “sugar and spice and everything nice” and “snips and snails and puppydog tails.

Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic. 　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’ 　　Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen: 　　First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort. 　　Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.) 　　Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure. 　　  　　What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’ 　　What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

Campbell’s slideshow lists grim domestic violence statistic after statistic: second leading cause of death for African American women, third leading cause of death for native women, seventh leading cause of death for Caucasian women. Campbell says twelve hundred abused women are killed every year in the United States.1 That figure does not count children. And it does not count the abusers who kill themselves after killing their partners, murder-suicides we see daily in the newspaper. And it does not count same-sex relationships where one or the other partner might not be “out.” And it does not count other family members, like sisters, aunts, grandmothers, who are often killed alongside the primary victim. And it does not count innocent bystanders: the twenty-six churchgoers in Texas, say, after a son-in-law has gone to a service to target his mother-in-law, or the two spa employees in Wisconsin killed alongside their client by her ex. The list is endless. And it does not count the jurisdictions who do not report their homicides, since homicide reporting is voluntary through the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reporting Data. So how many people are killed as a result of domestic violence each year? The bystanders, the other family members, the perpetrators’ suicides? The victims who just can’t take it anymore and kill themselves? The accidents that turn out not to be accidents at all, victims pushed out of cars and from cliffs or driven into trees. Tragedies forever uncategorized.

The Unknown Citizen by W. H. Auden (To JS/07 M 378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation. And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

While a 10x improvement is gargantuan, Teller has very specific reasons for aiming exactly that high. “You assume that going 10x bigger is going to be ten times harder,” he continues, “but often it’s literally easier to go bigger. Why should that be? It doesn’t feel intuitively right. But if you choose to make something 10 percent better, you are almost by definition signing up for the status quo—and trying to make it a little bit better. That means you start from the status quo, with all its existing assumptions, locked into the tools, technologies, and processes that you’re going to try to slightly improve. It means you’re putting yourself and your people into a smartness contest with everyone else in the world. Statistically, no matter the resources available, you’re not going to win. But if you sign up for moonshot thinking, if you sign up to make something 10x better, there is no chance of doing that with existing assumptions. You’re going to have to throw out the rule book. You’re going to have to perspective-shift and supplant all that smartness and resources with bravery and creativity.” This perspective shift is key. It encourages risk taking and enhances creativity while simultaneously guarding against the inevitable decline. Teller explains: “Even if you think you’re going to go ten times bigger, reality will eat into your 10x. It always does. There will be things that will be more expensive, some that are slower; others that you didn’t think were competitive will become competitive. If you shoot for 10x, you might only be at 2x by the time you’re done. But 2x is still amazing. On the other hand, if you only shoot for 2x [i.e., 200 percent], you’re only going to get 5 percent and it’s going to cost you the perspective shift that comes from aiming bigger.” Most critically here, this 10x strategy doesn’t hold true just for large corporations. “A start-up is simply a skunk works without the big company around it,” says Teller. “The upside is there’s no Borg to get sucked back into; the downside is you have no money. But that’s not a reason not to go after moonshots. I think the opposite is true. If you publicly state your big goal, if you vocally commit yourself to making more progress than is actually possible using normal methods, there’s no way back. In one fell swoop you’ve severed all ties between yourself and all the expert assumptions.” Thus entrepreneurs, by striving for truly huge goals, are tapping into the same creativity accelerant that Google uses to achieve such goals. That said, by itself, a willingness to take bigger risks

How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say, and please attend, for the peroration is beginning, you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? It is all very blessings of civilisation. What is you excuse? it is all very well for you to say, pointing to the streets and squares and forests of the globe swarming with black and white and coffee-coloured inhabitants, all busily engaged in traffic and enterprise and love-making, we have had other work on our hands. Without our doing, those seas would be unsailed and those fertile lands a desert. We have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are, according to statistics, at present in existence, and that, allowing that some had help, takes time. There is truth in what you say—I will not deny it. But at the same time may I remind you that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1886; that after the year 1880 a married woman was allowed by the law to possess her own property; and that in 1919—which is a whole nine years ago—she was given a vote? May I also remind you that most of the professions have been open to you for close to ten years now? When you reflect upon these immense privileges and the length of time during which they have been enjoyed, and the fact that there must be at this moment some two thousand women capable of earning over five hundred a year in one way or another, you will agree that the excuse of lack of opportunity, training, encouragement, leisure and money no longer holds good. Moreover, the economists are telling us that Mrs. Seton has had too many children. You must, of course, go on bearing children, but, so they say, in twos and threes, not in tens and twelves. Thus, with some time on your hands and with some book learning in your brains—you have had enough of the other kind, and are sent to college partly, I suspect, to be uneducated—surely you should embark upon another stage of your very long, very laborious and highly obscure career. A thousand pens are ready to suggest what you should do and what effect you will have. My own suggestion is a little fantastic, I admit; I prefer, therefore, to put it in the form of fiction.

the challenges of our day-to-day existence are sustained reminders that our life of faith simply must have its center somewhere other than in our ability to hold it together in our minds. Life is a pounding surf that wears away our rock-solid certainty. The surf always wins. Slowly but surely. Eventually. It may be best to ride the waves rather than resist them. What are your one or two biggest obstacles to staying Christian? What are those roadblocks you keep running into? What are those issues that won’t go away and make you wonder why you keep on believing at all? These are questions I asked on a survey I gave on my blog in the summer of 2013. Nothing fancy. I just asked some questions and waited to see what would happen. In the days to come, I was overwhelmed with comments and e-mails from readers, many anonymous, with bracingly honest answers often expressed through the tears of relentless and unnerving personal suffering. I didn’t do a statistical analysis (who has the time, plus I don’t know how), but the responses fell into five categories.         1.        The Bible portrays God as violent, reactive, vengeful, bloodthirsty, immoral, mean, and petty.         2.        The Bible and science collide on too many things to think that the Bible has anything to say to us today about the big questions of life.         3.        In the face of injustice and heinous suffering in the world, God seems disinterested or perhaps unable to do anything about it.         4.        In our ever-shrinking world, it is very difficult to hold on to any notion that Christianity is the only path to God.         5.        Christians treat each other so badly and in such harmful ways that it calls into question the validity of Christianity—or even whether God exists. These five categories struck me as exactly right—at least, they match up with my experience. And I’d bet good money they resonate with a lot of us. All five categories have one big thing in common: “Faith in God no longer makes sense to me.” Understanding, correct thinking, knowing what you believe—these were once true of their faith, but no longer are. Because life happened. A faith that promises to provide firm answers and relieve our doubt is a faith that will not hold up to the challenges and tragedies of life. Only deep trust can hold up.