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Quotes on Probability

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Quote Authors

Arnold Van Den Berg, Arthur Rock, Benjamin Graham, Bernard Baruch, Bill Miller, Charles Ellis, Charlie Munger, Chris Browne, Chuck Akre, Daniel Kahneman, David Abrams, David Swensen, Dean LeBaron, Dean Williams, Edward Thorp, Edwin Lefevre, Fred Schwed Jr, George Soros, Henry Singleton, Hetty Green, Howard Marks, Joel Greenblatt, John Bogle, John Kenneth Galbraith, John Maynard Keynes, John Neff, John Stuart Mill, John Templeton, Lou Simpson, Marty Whitman, Meir Statman, Michael Price, Mohnish Pabrai, Myron Scholes, Paul Tudor Jones, Peter Bernstein, Peter Cundill, Peter Lynch, Philip Carret, Philip Fisher, Richard Thaler, Robert Kirby, Robert Shiller, Robert Wilson, Seth Klarman, Stanley Druckenmiller, T. Rowe Price, Walter Schloss, Warren Buffett,

“
Risk is when there are multiple possible future states and the probabilities of those different future states occurring are known.
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George Soros
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There has always been a considerable number of pathetic dopes who busy themselves examining the last thousand numbers which have appeared on a roulette wheel, in search of such a repeating pattern. Sadly enough, they have usually found it.
”

Fred Schwed Jr
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You always need to be cognizant of six sigma events that can have ugly impacts on your portfolio and account for the approximate probabilities.
”

Mohnish Pabrai
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Investing is not a discipline based on absolutes or precise mathematics. There simply aren't enough data points available to work out the exact odds.
”

Mohnish Pabrai
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Businessmen play a mixed game of skill and chance, the average results of which to the players are not known by those who take a hand.
”

John Maynard Keynes
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It is possible for an old, overweight ballplayer, whose legs and batting eye are gone, to tag a fastball on the nose for a pinch-hit home run, but you don't change your line-up because of it.
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Warren Buffett
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If you quantify, you won't necessarily rise to brilliance, but neither will you sink to craziness.
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Warren Buffett
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I'm in the insurance business, and anything that can happen will happen.
”

Warren Buffett
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Many years ago, an older partner taught me to distinguish between outcomes that are unlikely and outcomes that are catastrophic. The latter are to be avoided even if the odds on them are tiny.
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Peter Bernstein
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In speaking of future prospects it is often difficult to make the distinction clear between what one considers the most desirable in the public interest and what one reckons to be the most probable in the actual circumstances. For unfortunately the course of events which is the most desirable is not always the most probable!
”

John Maynard Keynes
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The laws of probabilities tell us that almost anyone can achieve phenomenal success over any given measurement period. It is the task of those evaluating a money manager to ascertain how much of past success is due to luck and how much to skill.
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Seth Klarman
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You will be right, over the course of many transactions, if your hypotheses are correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct.
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Warren Buffett
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In this business, if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.
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Peter Lynch
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Survival as an investor over that famous long course depends from the very first on recognition that we do not know what is going to happen. We can speculate or calculate or estimate, but we can never be certain.
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Peter Bernstein
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Consequences, not probabilities, determine the decisions that matter.
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Peter Bernstein
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People do not care for the idea that any important activity which affects them is as beyond their control as a pair of dancing dice.
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Fred Schwed Jr
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If we assume that a very considerable amount of Wall Street activity must inevitably have elements of chance in it, then the sound idea would be to measure these chances as accurately as you can, and play the game in the direction of having the odds on your side.
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Benjamin Graham
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I think that we only get estimates of the distributions and that we can only be somewhat sure of the estimates. That makes the problems in the financial world much more difficult, I think, because you have these uncertainties in the distributions.
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Edward Thorp
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Anybody that says that they see five and ten standard deviation events every couple of years is obviously not thinking correctly about probabilities.
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Seth Klarman
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No matter how complete and accurate an analysis may be, there is always a possibility either of some new condition arising to belie your conclusions, or else of the market refusing to act in accordance with your just expectations.
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Benjamin Graham
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The security analyst can only give you certain hints as to what the solution is likely to be, certain indications of a range of value rather than a specific figure, and perhaps a diffident suggestion as to where within this range he believes the probabilities of the future will lie.
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Benjamin Graham
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