Hand-picked quotes about statistics from the best non-fiction books

We tend to be overly optimistic when we map out timelines, goals, targets, and other horizons. We look at the best-case scenario instead of using the past to determine what a more realistic scenario would look like.

Too much studying without playing makes it hard to fully absorb knowledge.

The more you overestimate your own skill relative to luck, the less you learn from what the environment was trying to tell you, and the worse your decisions become.

We need to train ourselves to see the world in a probabilistic light - and even then, we often ignore the numbers in favor of our own experience. We believe what we want to see, not what research shows.

Poker is exactly like life, but with instant karma.

To our minds, 99 percent, even 90 percent, basically means 100 percent. The offer of a bet makes you pause. Now that you have something real at stake, you have to reevaluate just how sure of a sure thing your opinion really is. You become aware of the possibility of your being mistaken.

To be successful, we need to train our powers of observation, to cultivate that attitude of mind of being constantly on the look-out for the unexpected and make a habit of examining every clue that chance presents.

The illusion of control prevented real control from emerging. Before long, the quality of your decisions deteriorate.

When you think you know more than you do, you ignore any signs to the contrary.

You did what worked in the past, or what you had decided would work - and failed to grasp that the circumstances had shifted so that a previously successful strategy was no longer so.

You’re not lucky because more good things are actually happening; you’re lucky because you’re alert to them when they do.