To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of.
Interpretation
Post-experiment analysis is often too late to be useful, as it only reveals what went wrong.
This quote by Ronald Fisher highlights the importance of timely analysis in experiments. It suggests that consulting a statistician after an experiment has concluded is often ineffective, akin to performing an autopsy on a failed experiment rather than using statistical insights to improve the methods and decision-making before or during the process.
In practice
A scientist might use this quote during a conference to emphasize the need for real-time data analysis.
No isolated experiment, however significant in itself, can suffice for the experimental demonstration of any natural phenomenon; for the "one chance in a million" will undoubtedly occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however surprised we may be that it should occur to us.
I believe sanity and realism can be restored to the teaching of Mathematical Statistics most easily and directly by entrusting such teaching largely to men and women who have had personal experience of research in the Natural Sciences.
It takes so long to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.
I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.
The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful.
If the government regulates against use of drones or stem cells or artificial intelligence, all that means is that the work and the research leave the borders of that country and go someplace else.
Either CS (coordinate system) could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: the sun is at rest and the earth moves, or the sun moves and the earth is at rest, would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS
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