Statistics – Page 114 – William M. Briggs

Why The Bootstrap Seems To Work—And Why It Produces Over-Certainty

Let's drag the statistician's hoary threadbare ball-filled bag out of the cupboard to make a point. In it are 3 white balls and 2 black. Using the statistical syllogism, we…

Statistics

Paper Says Some Psychiatric Diagnoses “Scientifically Meaningless”

The title is an understatement: Heterogeneity in psychiatric diagnostic classification. This is a paper in Psychiatry Research by Kate Allsopp, John Read, Rhiannon Corcoran, and Peter Kinderman. Abstract (to which…

Statistics

Yes, There Is A Hot Hand In Basketball

On the Second of March in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred Sixty-Two, well before the sport became another venue for pencil-necked political correctness, a basketball player…

Class Statistics

The Doomsday Argument Is Doomed: Flawed Application Of Bayes

The WSJ on 27 June 2019 published an essay by William Poundstone on the hoary Doomsday Argument. Many are fooled by this equation, which contains a fundamental, even glaring, flaw.…

Statistics

The Epidemiologist Fallacy Strikes Again — Pesticides & Autism

Long-time readers will recall the epidemiologist fallacy is a shotgun marriage of the ecological fallacy and wee p-values. Make that and/or confidence intervals. For confidence intervals are equivalent to p-values…

Class Statistics

So-Called Random Numbers And Encryption: Update With Real-World Example

Psst. Hey, buddy. Word to the wise: "GQNZWZURUDPBFWDMEGBYIXGBGZRSVNHWOIQPPSH GXUVMZ". Keep it secret. That odd string of letters and spaces (well, once space) contains an encrypted message. In order to read…

Statistics

Case Study Of How Easy It Is To Go Wrong

We used to talk a lot about the amygdala here: Yet Another Study "Proves" Liberal, Conservative Brain Differences (wee ps, amygdalas), Scientists Suddenly Discover Men Don't Understand Women (wee ps,…

Class Statistics

When Testing Parameters Might Make Sense

This example is derived from ongoing conversations with a colleague, and portions of this post (mathematified) might show up in a paper. The genesis of this example is from Ron…

Chad W Jessup on On That “Bombshell German Study” That “Exposes the PCR Test Fraud That Locked Down the World”November 18, 2025
I would like to add to your excellent post that there were probably thousands and thousands, if not millions, of…
Williis Eschenbach on Why Study Probability?November 18, 2025
John, I don't troll. Never have, never would. Google "projection", there's a good fellow. I asked a question, hoping to…
John Pate on On That “Bombshell German Study” That “Exposes the PCR Test Fraud That Locked Down the World”November 18, 2025
If only people still had faith in chicken entrails this would all be unnecessary.
John Pate on Why Study Probability?November 18, 2025
Eschenbach, you're trolling and Briggs humours you, it is amusing. Somehow Briggs can't shake off the embrace of scientism in…
On That “Bombshell German Study” That “Exposes the PCR Test Fraud That Locked Down the World” – William M. Briggs on Taleb Chastises Calm Journalist, Advises Precautionary Panic To CoronavirusNovember 18, 2025
[…] to those who were sober and not grasping, avaricious, or panicked. Those who kept their calm from the beginning…