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 (1915-2000) American mathematician and statistician
“Sunset Salvo,” The American Statistician (Feb 1986)
Full text.
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 (1915-2000) American mathematician and statistician
“The future of data analysis,” Annals of Mathematical Statistics 33 (1) (1962)
Paraphrased in Super Freakonomics as: "An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question."
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