"The framing of hypotheses is, for the enquirer after truth, not the end, but the beginning of his work. Each of his systems is invented, not that he may admire it and follow it into all its consistent consequences, but that he may make it the occasion of a course of active experiment and observation. And if the results of this process contradict his fundamental assumptions, however ingenious, however symmetrical, however elegant his system may be, he rejects it without hesitation. He allows no natural yearning for the offspring of his own mind to draw him aside from the higher duty of loyalty to his sovereign, Truth, to her he not only gives his affections and his wishes, but strenuous labour and scrupulous minuteness of attention." (William Whewell, "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" Vol. 2, 1847)
"Rule 2. Any summary of a distribution of numbers in terms of symmetric functions should not give an objective degree of belief in any one of the inferences or predictions to be made therefrom that would cause human action significantly different from what this action would be if the original distributions had been taken as evidence." (Walter A Shewhart, "Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product", 1931)
"Logging size transforms the original skewed distribution into a more symmetrical one by pulling in the long right tail of the distribution toward the mean. The short left tail is, in addition, stretched. The shift toward symmetrical distribution produced by the log transform is not, of course, merely for convenience. Symmetrical distributions, especially those that resemble the normal distribution, fulfill statistical assumptions that form the basis of statistical significance testing in the regression model." (Edward R Tufte, "Data Analysis for Politics and Policy", 1974)
"Symmetry is also important because it can simplify our thinking about the distribution of a set of data. If we can establish that the data are (approximately) symmetric, then we no longer need to describe the shapes of both the right and left halves. (We might even combine the information from the two sides and have effectively twice as much data for viewing the distributional shape.) Finally, symmetry is important because many statistical procedures are designed for, and work best on, symmetric data." (John M Chambers et al, "Graphical Methods for Data Analysis", 1983)
"There are several reasons why symmetry is an important concept in data analysis. First, the most important single summary of a set of data is the location of the center, and when data meaning of 'center' is unambiguous. We can take center to mean any of the following things, since they all coincide exactly for symmetric data, and they are together for nearly symmetric data: (l) the Center Of symmetry. (2) the arithmetic average or center Of gravity, (3) the median or 50%. Furthermore, if data a single point of highest concentration instead of several (that is, they are unimodal), then we can add to the list (4) point of highest concentration. When data are far from symmetric, we may have trouble even agreeing on what we mean by center; in fact, the center may become an inappropriate summary for the data." (John M Chambers et al, "Graphical Methods for Data Analysis", 1983)
"If a distribution were perfectly symmetrical, all symmetry-plot points would be on the diagonal line. Off-line points indicate asymmetry. Points fall above the line when distance above the median is greater than corresponding distance below the median. A consistent run of above-the-line points indicates positive skew; a run of below-the-line points indicates negative skew." (Lawrence C Hamilton, "Regression with Graphics: A second course in applied statistics", 1991)
"Remember that normality and symmetry are not the same thing. All normal distributions are symmetrical, but not all symmetrical distributions are normal. With water use we were able to transform the distribution to be approximately symmetrical and normal, but often symmetry is the most we can hope for. For practical purposes, symmetry (with no severe outliers) may be sufficient. Transformations are not a magic wand, however. Many distributions cannot even be made symmetrical." (Lawrence C Hamilton, "Regression with Graphics: A second course in applied statistics", 1991)
"Chaos demonstrates that deterministic causes can have random effects […] There's a similar surprise regarding symmetry: symmetric causes can have asymmetric effects. […] This paradox, that symmetry can get lost between cause and effect, is called symmetry-breaking. […] From the smallest scales to the largest, many of nature's patterns are a result of broken symmetry; […]" (Ian Stewart & Martin Golubitsky, "Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer?", 1992)
"In everyday language, the words 'pattern' and 'symmetry' are used almost interchangeably, to indicate a property possessed by a regular arrangement of more-or-less identical units […]” (Ian Stewart & Martin Golubitsky, "Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer?", 1992)
"Nature behaves in ways that look mathematical, but nature is not the same as mathematics. Every mathematical model makes simplifying assumptions; its conclusions are only as valid as those assumptions. The assumption of perfect symmetry is excellent as a technique for deducing the conditions under which symmetry-breaking is going to occur, the general form of the result, and the range of possible behaviour. To deduce exactly which effect is selected from this range in a practical situation, we have to know which imperfections are present." (Ian Stewart & Martin Golubitsky, "Fearful Symmetry", 1992)
"Data that are skewed toward large values occur commonly. Any set of positive measurements is a candidate. Nature just works like that. In fact, if data consisting of positive numbers range over several powers of ten, it is almost a guarantee that they will be skewed. Skewness creates many problems. There are visualization problems. A large fraction of the data are squashed into small regions of graphs, and visual assessment of the data degrades. There are characterization problems. Skewed distributions tend to be more complicated than symmetric ones; for example, there is no unique notion of location and the median and mean measure different aspects of the distribution. There are problems in carrying out probabilistic methods. The distribution of skewed data is not well approximated by the normal, so the many probabilistic methods based on an assumption of a normal distribution cannot be applied." (William S Cleveland, "Visualizing Data", 1993)
"A normal distribution is most unlikely, although not impossible, when the observations are dependent upon one another - that is, when the probability of one event is determined by a preceding event. The observations will fail to distribute themselves symmetrically around the mean." (Peter L Bernstein, "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk", 1996)
"Symmetry is basically a geometrical concept. Mathematically it can be defined as the invariance of geometrical patterns under certain operations. But when abstracted, the concept applies to all sorts of situations. It is one of the ways by which the human mind recognizes order in nature. In this sense symmetry need not be perfect to be meaningful. Even an approximate symmetry attracts one's attention, and makes one wonder if there is some deep reason behind it." (Eguchi Tohru & K Nishijima ," Broken Symmetry: Selected Papers Of Y Nambu", 1995)
"How deep truths can be defined as invariants – things that do not change no matter what; how invariants are defined by symmetries, which in turn define which properties of nature are conserved, no matter what. These are the selfsame symmetries that appeal to the senses in art and music and natural forms like snowflakes and galaxies. The fundamental truths are based on symmetry, and there’s a deep kind of beauty in that." (K C Cole, "The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty", 1997)
"Symmetry and skewness can be judged, but boxplots are not entirely useful for judging shape. It is not possible to use a boxplot to judge whether or not a dataset is bell-shaped, nor is it possible to judge whether or not a dataset may be bimodal." (Jessica M Utts & Robert F Heckard, "Mind on Statistics", 2007)
"The concept of symmetry (invariance) with its rigorous mathematical formulation and generalization has guided us to know the most fundamental of physical laws. Symmetry as a concept has helped mankind not only to define ‘beauty’ but also to express the ‘truth’. Physical laws tries to quantify the truth that appears to be ‘transient’ at the level of phenomena but symmetry promotes that truth to the level of ‘eternity’." (Vladimir G Ivancevic & Tijana T Ivancevic,"Quantum Leap", 2008)
"The concept of symmetry is used widely in physics. If the laws that determine relations between physical magnitudes and a change of these magnitudes in the course of time do not vary at the definite operations (transformations), they say, that these laws have symmetry (or they are invariant) with respect to the given transformations. For example, the law of gravitation is valid for any points of space, that is, this law is in variant with respect to the system of coordinates." (Alexey Stakhov et al, "The Mathematics of Harmony", 2009)
"A pattern is a design or model that helps grasp something. Patterns help connect things that may not appear to be connected. Patterns help cut through complexity and reveal simpler understandable trends. […] Patterns can be temporal, which is something that regularly occurs over time. Patterns can also be spatial, such as things being organized in a certain way. Patterns can be functional, in that doing certain things leads to certain effects. Good patterns are often symmetric. They echo basic structures and patterns that we are already aware of." (Anil K. Maheshwari, "Business Intelligence and Data Mining", 2015)
"One kind of probability - classic probability - is based on the idea of symmetry and equal likelihood […] In the classic case, we know the parameters of the system and thus can calculate the probabilities for the events each system will generate. […] A second kind of probability arises because in daily life we often want to know something about the likelihood of other events occurring […]. In this second case, we need to estimate the parameters of the system because we don’t know what those parameters are. […] A third kind of probability differs from these first two because it’s not obtained from an experiment or a replicable event - rather, it expresses an opinion or degree of belief about how likely a particular event is to occur. This is called subjective probability […]." (Daniel J Levitin, "Weaponized Lies", 2017)
"Variables which follow symmetric, bell-shaped distributions tend to be nice as features in models. They show substantial variation, so they can be used to discriminate between things, but not over such a wide range that outliers are overwhelming." (Steven S Skiena, "The Data Science Design Manual", 2017)
"Data analysis and data mining are concerned with unsupervised pattern finding and structure determination in data sets. The data sets themselves are explicitly linked as a form of representation to an observational or otherwise empirical domain of interest. 'Structure' has long been understood as symmetry which can take many forms with respect to any transformation, including point, translational, rotational, and many others. Symmetries directly point to invariants, which pinpoint intrinsic properties of the data and of the background empirical domain of interest. As our data models change, so too do our perspectives on analysing data." (Fionn Murtagh, "Data Science Foundations: Geometry and Topology of Complex Hierarchic Systems and Big Data Analytics", 2018)
"It is not enough to give a single summary for a distribution - we need to have an idea of the spread, sometimes known as the variability. [...] The range is a natural choice, but is clearly very sensitive to extreme values [...] In contrast the inter-quartile range (IQR) is unaffected by extremes. This is the distance between the 25th and 75th percentiles of the data and so contains the ‘central half’ of the numbers [...] Finally the standard deviation is a widely used measure of spread. It is the most technically complex measure, but is only really appropriate for well-behaved symmetric data since it is also unduly influenced by outlying values." (David Spiegelhalter, "The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data", 2019)
"Many statistical procedures perform more effectively on data that are normally distributed, or at least are symmetric and not excessively kurtotic (fat-tailed), and where the mean and variance are approximately constant. Observed time series frequently require some form of transformation before they exhibit these distributional properties, for in their 'raw' form they are often asymmetric." (Terence C Mills, "Applied Time Series Analysis: A practical guide to modeling and forecasting", 2019)
"Mean-averages can be highly misleading when the raw data do not form a symmetric pattern around a central value but instead are skewed towards one side [...], typically with a large group of standard cases but with a tail of a few either very high (for example, income) or low (for example, legs) values." (David Spiegelhalter, "The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data", 2019)
