Order of Apparent Chaos - I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of cosmic order expresses by the "Law of Frequency Error." The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified if they had know of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason - Francis Galton Natural Inheritance (1889).
Wheh there is mention that the future cannot be forecast or estimates of past, present, and future cannot be made, careful consideration must be given to the speakers lack of understanding of basic statistics. One place to start is Principles of Statistics, M. G. Bulmer.
Probability and statistics rule our project world. We must treat all aspects of project work, technical, cost and schedule, as random varaibles drawn from an underlying probabilty distribution - either discrete or continuous. Without considering the random nature of these project elements and their behaviours, our decision making capabilities are severely limited. When we ignore them, fail to consider them, and preceed in their presence, we will be disapointed with the outcomes.