Jelle de Jong writes in to ask: Working as a quant analyst in finance I recently got interested in the Briggsian/Jaynesian/Bayesian interpretation of probability but am still struggling a bit…

McKibben's Folly Suppose it is true that we have E = "A six-sided object, just one side of which is labeled 6, and when tossed only one side will show."…

Probability is screwy, and we statisticians do a horrible, rotten job of teaching it. The first thing students learn in normal statistics classes is about "measures of central tendency" or…

Since we have spent the weekend with these matters, I thought it appropriate to include the first part of the Introduction to the new book I've been working on. It…

Yesterday we looked at NCDC's claim that the 13-month stretch of "above-normal" temperatures had only a 1 in 1.6 million chance of occurring. Let's today clarify the criticism. The NCDC…

My dad took a swing with his nine-iron and the wiffle simulacrum of a golf ball took flight, arched upwards, spun left and, without bouncing, landed atop my favorite blade…

We started by learning that probability is hard and not always quantifiable. For instance, I imagine many of you would have judged it more likely than not that the Supreme…