When asked why he doesn't believe in astrology, the logician Raymond Smullyan responds that he's a Gemini and Geminis never believe in astrology.

In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating statistics we generally have an opposite inclination to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled.

Innumeracy and pseudoscience are often associated, in part because of the ease with which mathematical certainty can be invoked, to bludgeon the innumerate into a dumb acquiescence.

The only bit of logic-based public bathroom humor I know is: the difference between men and women is that between the statement [P and not Q] and the statement [Q and not P].

We ourselves are co-called non-linear dynamical systems... I don't feel quite so pathetic when I interrupt a project to check on some obscure web site or newsgroup or derive an iota of cheer by getting rid of pocketful of change.

Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet."

There is something inhuman and vaguely pornographic about statistics... Pornography, on the other hand, with its loosely bound sequences of storyless sexual couplings often has the feel of a statistical survey.