John Tukey

1915–2000 · American mathematician

Topics: learning

• 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.

  — John Tukey

• 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.

  — John Tukey

• 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.

  — John Tukey