Inference Quotes

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference. (Paul Samuelson)

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.

Richard Stone

The wisdom obtained in the higher states of consciousness is different from that obtained by inference and testimony as it refers to particulars.

Patañjali

The conjuror or con man is a very good provider of information. He supplies lots of data, by inference or direct statement, but it's false data. Scientists aren't used to that scenario. An electron or a galaxy is not capricious, nor deceptive; but a human can be either or both.

James Randi

Suppose that the organism is given the problem of determining the analysis of a stimulus at a certain level of representation - e.g., the problem of determining which sequence of words a given utterance encodes. Since, in the general case, transducer outputs underdetermine perceptual analyses, we can think of the solution of such problems as involving processes of nondemonstrative inference. In particular, we can think of each input system as a computational mechanism which projects and confirms a certain class of hyputheses on the basis of a certain body of data.

Jerry Fodor

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

Bertrand Russell

Shadwell hated all southerners and, by inference, was standing at the North Pole.

Terry Pratchett

Since reasoning, or inference, the principal subject of logic, is an operation which usually takes place by means of words, and in complicated cases can take place in no other way: those who have not a thorough insight into both the signification and purpose of words, will be under chances, amounting almost to certainty, of reasoning or inferring incorrectly.

John Stuart Mill

Logic is justly considered the basis of all other sciences, even if only for the reason that in every argument we employ concepts taken from the field of logic, and that ever correct inference proceeds in accordance with its laws.

Alfred Tarski

We may take it to be the accepted idea that the Mosaic books were not handed down to us for our instruction in scientific knowledge, and that it is our duty to ground our scientific beliefs upon observation and inference, unmixed with considerations of a different order.

Asa Gray

A million and a half of people spread over the Atlantic seaboard might be thought no great number; but it was a new thing in the world. ...which had in fact been carefully noted by Benjamin Franklin in a pamphlet on The Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.-that within three-quarters of a century the population of the continental colonies had doubled every twenty-five years, whereas the population of Old England during a hundred years past had not doubled once and now stood at only some six and a half millions. ...With these facts in mind, one might indeed say that a people with so much vitality and expansive power was abundantly able to pay taxes; but perhaps it was also a fair inference, if any one was disposed to press the matter, that unless it was so minded, such a people was already, or assuredly soon would be, equally able not to pay them. (Carl L. Becker)

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.

Tjalling Koopmans

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

Thomas Jefferson

There is in fact no contradiction at all between the statement of an exact bookkeeping balance ex post and the obvious inference that in a situation when saving is increasing without a corresponding increase of investment, or perhaps with an adverse movement in investment, there must be a tendency ex ante to a disparity.

Gunnar Myrdal

God is only an idea in your mind. The fact is you. The only thing you know for sure is: ‘here and now I am.' Remove the 'here and now' the ‘I am' remains, unassailable. (...). All I can say truly is: ‘I am,' all else is inference (...). The sense ‘I am' is the manifestation of a deeper cause, which you may call self, God, Reality or by any other name. (...).

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity.

Alexander Hamilton

[S]cientists are not robotic inducing machines that infer structures of explanation only from regularities observed in natural phenomena (assuming, as I doubt, that such a style of reasoning could ever achieve success in principle). Scientists are human beings, immersed in culture, and struggling with all the curious tools of inference that mind permits [...]. Culture can potentiate as well as constrain-as Darwin's translation of Adam Smith's laissez-faire economic models into biology as the theory of natural selection. In any case, objective minds do not exist outside culture, so we must make the best of our ineluctable embedding.

Stephen Jay Gould

In view of the dramatic effects that alternative representations may produce on search and recognition processes, it may seem surprising that the differential effects on inference appear less strong. Inference is largely independent of representation if the information content of the two sets of inference rules [one operating on diagrams and the other operating on verbal statements] is equivalent-i.e. the two sets are isomorphs as they are in our examples.

Herbert Simon

We do not require elaborate training merely in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference. Such abstinence is only too easy.

Alfred North Whitehead

For avoiding nonsense in general, we might accumulate millions of censors. For all we know, this "negative meta-knowledge" - about patterns of thought and inference that have been found defective or harmful - may be a large portion of all we know.

Marvin Minsky

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action. (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference - inference either intuitive or deliberate.

Arthur Eddington

Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference.

Arthur Eddington

The theory of the Aryan race is just an assumption... based on a philological proposition... that a greater number of languages of Europe and some languages of Asia must be referred to a common ancestral speech... (From this) are drawn two inferences: (1) unity of race, and (2) that race being the Aryan race. The argument is that if the languages are descended from a common ancestral speech, then there must have existed a race whose mother tongue it was... From this inference is drawn another inference, which is that of a common original habitat. It is argued that there could be no community of language unless people had a common habitat, permitting close communion.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

The result of the mathematician's creative work is demonstrative reasoning, a proof; but the proof is discovered by plausible reasoning, by guessing. If the learning of mathematics reflects to any degree the invention of mathematics, it must have a place for guessing, for plausible inference.

George Pólya

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