The group was alarmed to find that if you are a labourer, cleaner or dock worker, you are twice as likely to die than a member of the professional classes. Statistics is the art of never having to say you're wrong. Variance is what any two statisticians are at. It's like the tale of the roadside merchant who was asked to explain how he could sell rabbit sandwiches so cheap. One horse, one rabbit.
Smoking is a leading cause of statistics.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Death is 99 per cent fatal to laboratory rats. A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion. A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine. Someone who doesn't have the personality to be an accountant.