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.
The investigation of nature is an infinite pasture-ground where all may graze, and where the more bite, the longer the grass grows, the sweeter is its flavor, and the more it nourishes.
We should've asked China to be a portion of the space station. We should've worked out ways that we can... just give away the technology that we have that puts things up into space, with cooperation up above the atmosphere that's needed to help each other.
Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the moon, and that's a very dubious and disappointing honor. It's been far too long.
There are strong reasons for believing that space goes on beyond the limits of our observational horizon. There are strong reasons because if you look in opposite directions, conditions are the same to within one part in 100,000. So if we are part of some finite structure then, if the gradient is so shallow, it is likely to go on much further.
[Bacteria] have an incredibly complicated chemical lexicon that ... allows bacteria to be multicellular. In the spirit of TED they're doing things together because it makes a difference.
A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weal test. Normals teach us rules; outliers teach us laws. For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias.
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