gaffa comments on Rationality Quotes - September 2009 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: thomblake 01 September 2009 03:06PM

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Comment author: gaffa 03 September 2009 09:06:47PM *  9 points [-]

It is better to have an approximate answer to the right question than an exact answer to the wrong question.

-- John Tukey

Comment author: conchis 03 September 2009 10:26:17PM *  5 points [-]

FWIW, the exact quote (from pp.13-14 of this article) is:

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. [Emphasis in original]

Your paraphrase is snappier though (as well as being less ambiguous; it's hard to tell in the original whether Tukey intends the adjectives "vague" and "precise" to apply to the questions or the answers).