Posted inCulture
It’s Worse Than You Thought
Despair is not the answer to the following confirmations of gloom and decadence about which you might have been unaware. Recognition of the depths to which Western liberal culture has…
Posted inStatistics
Stats from Dalrymple
Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal reviewing Paul Hollander's From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship said (a long but necessary quotation; the emphasis…
Posted inCulture
Most Academic Papers Of Little Or No Value—And Many Are Toxic
https://twitter.com/AmirSariaslan/status/862393511622184960 Here are some interesting numbers. Citation counts are our primary measure of a paper's scholarly impact, and yet citation counts on average are distressingly low. By one count, 12…
Posted inFun
I’m No Longer At Cornell
I got fired about a month ago. This would ordinarily fall under the categories, "About time" or "So?", and thus it is not worth mentioning. Except for this. I had…
Posted inCulture
What Is Communism? Part I — Guest Post by Ianto Watt
Editor's note. A particularly apropos (leisurely paced, so relax) essay on the nature of Communism. Recall this is 2017, one hundred years after the successful revolutions in Russia. Just what…
Posted inBook review Statistics
A Deep Philosophical Account Of Probability
Another review of Uncertainty: The Soul of Modeling, Probability & Statistics, this one taken from an Amazon customer. It was 7 or 8 years ago when I was sitting in…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Is Most Published Research Wrong? Yep. Here’s Why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q One of my students---my heart soars like a hawk!---sent me the video linked above. I'll assume you've watched it, as my comments make reference to it. About the dismal…
Posted inStatistics
On The Severe (And Unrecognized) Limitations Of fMRI
So this 44-year-old Frenchman---let's call him Jacques---presented for a "mild left leg weakness". The leg bone being connected to the hip bone, etc., it was eventually discovered that Jacques's "skull…
