https://wist.info Wish I'd Said That! Fri, 04 Sep 2026 21:54:14 +0000 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.4 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.4 https://wist.info/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/little-w-little-box-60x60.jpg https://wist.info 32 32 43606282 https://wist.info/wolfinger-ray/42496/ https://wist.info/wolfinger-ray/42496/#respond Tue, 14 Jul 2020 00:02:20 +0000 Dave https://wist.info/?p=42496 The plural of anecdote is data.

Raymond Wolfinger (1931–2015) American political scientist and professor
Comment (c. 1969)
    (Source)

Notes:

• In a 2004 email to Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, Wolfinger wrote: "I said 'The plural of anecdote is data' some time in the 1969-70 academic year while teaching a graduate seminar at Stanford. The occasion was a student's dismissal of a simple factual statement -- by another student or me -- as a mere anecdote. The quotation was my rejoinder. Since then I have missed few opportunities to quote myself."
• The first print appearance is in Roger C. Noll, "The Game of Health Care Regulation," in Richard S. Gordon, ed., Issues in Health Care Regulation (1980): "Most of the evidence is anecdotal. Nevertheless, in the words of a leading political scientist, Raymond Wolfinger, the plural of anecdote is data ...."

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