George E. P. Box famous quotes

04-17-2025

All models are wrong, but some are useful.
-- George E. P. Box

#Science #Models
Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.
-- George E. P. Box

#Remember #Models #Practicals
Discovering the unexpected is more important than confirming the known.
-- George E. P. Box

#Important #Unexpected #Discovering
The management system which makes only a pretense of valuing employee involvement and encouraging employee empowerment merely breeds cynicism.
-- George E. P. Box

#Cynical #Empowerment #Management
Statisticians, like artists, have the bad habit of falling in love with their models.
-- George E. P. Box

#Falling In Love #Artist #Statistics
The benefits provided by worker participation are twofold. Quality is improved because of the finding and fixing of a very large number of problems, but also, and perhaps equally important, moral is improved.
-- George E. P. Box

#Numbers #Risk #Important
To find out what happens to a system when you interfere with it you have to interfere with it (not just passively observe it).
-- George E. P. Box

#Observation #Interfere
Management must provide employees with tools that will enable them to do their jobs better, and with encouragement to use these tools. In particular, they must collect data.
-- George E. P. Box

#Encouragement #Jobs #Data
...all models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind...
-- George E. P. Box

#Science #Mind #Statistics
One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice.
-- George E. P. Box

#Mean #Hands #Practice
For the theory-practice iteration to work, the scientist must be, as it were, mentally ambidextrous; fascinated equally on the one hand by possible meanings, theories, and tentative models to be induced from data and the practical reality of the real world, and on the other with the factual implications deducible from tentative theories, models and hypotheses.
-- George E. P. Box

#Real #Hands #Practice
The old-fashioned idea of a good manager is one who is supposed to know all the answers, can solve every problem himself, and can give appropriate orders to his subordinates to carry out his plans... A good modern manager is like a good coach who leads and encourages his team in never-ending quality improvement.
-- George E. P. Box

#Team #Order #Ideas

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