validity of HG Well quotation

[poldrack]

from Ralf Valerian:
wrt to
The H.G. Wells Quote on Statistics: A Question of Accuracy
by James W. Tankard, Jr.,
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712
Historia Mathematics 6 (1979), 30-33
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82336451.pdf

Wells passage in "Mankind in the making"
seems to me much closer to your focus of "statistical thinking"
"to describe the world accurately" than the "quote"