IS STATISTICS A SCIENCE?

[摘要] What. . .distinguishes technology from science? Let me put my own view as forcibly as I can. I hold that, in contrast to the scientist, the technologist is not concerned with truth at all. . . .That the technologist is not concerned with truth may sound a bit shocking but it should come as no surprise. . . . The mark of the technologist is that he must act; everything that he does has some sort of a deadline. He has to manage, therefore, with as much truth as is available to him, with the scientific theories current in his time, and if these are subsequently proved to be untrue (the fate of all scientific theories), or are even known already to be so, he must still do the best he can. One of his tactics is embodied in the splendid institution of factors of safety, where structural members are carefully designed to take the known stresses according to the best available theories, and are then made 100 percent or so stronger again just in case the theories are not quite right.

[学科分类] 儿科学