Natural Selection Is A Mechanism For Generating

[coining The Phrase "test Of Significance"] Critical Tests Of This Kind May Be Called Tests Of Significance, And When Such Tests Are Available We May Discover Whether A Second Sample Is Or Is Not Significantly Different From The First.

The Tendency Of Modern Scientific Teaching Is To Neglect The Great Books, To Lay Far Too Much Stress Upon Relatively Unimportant Modern Work, And To Present Masses Of Detail Of Doubtful Truth And Questionable Weight In Such A Way As To Obscure Principles.

Natural Selection Is A Mechanism For Generating An Exceedingly High Degree Of Improbability.

If One In Twenty Does Not Seem High Enough Odds, We May, If We Prefer It, Draw The Line At One In Fifty (the 2 Per Cent. Point), Or One In A Hundred (the 1 Per Cent. Point). Personally, The Writer Prefers To Set A Low Standard Of Significance At The 5 Per Cent. Point, And Ignore Entirely All Results Which Fail To Reach This Level. A Scientific Fact Should Be Regarded As Experimentally Established Only If A Properly Designed Experiment Rarely Fails To Give This Level Of Significance.

I Believe That No One Who Is Familiar, Either With Mathematical Advances In Other Fields, Or With The Range Of Special Biological Conditions To Be Considered, Would Ever Conceive That Everything Could Be Summed Up In A Single Mathematical Formula, However Complex.