John Tukey Data Quotations

The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.

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.

There is no data that can be displayed in a pie chart, that cannot be displayed BETTER in some other type of chart.

This is my favorite part about analytics: Taking boring flat data and bringing it to life through visualization.

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.

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.