Statisticians

[lathany]

"To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of." - Ronald Fisher.

I heard this quote today at a swan-song lunchtime presentation of one of our department. It made me think of a dear friend who is dealing with the results from a survey that her colleague messed up.