John Tukey Quotes (1915-2000)

“The tool that is so dull that you cannot cut yourself on it is not likely to be sharp enough to be either useful or helpful.”

“The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.”

“Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.
• Variant: "An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question." "as the renowned statistician John Tukey once reportedly said," according to Super Freakonomics page 224.”