“It is well established that being beautiful confers many advantages on a person.” This is the opening sentence of a break-through paper by two Swedes and a Finn. From that true statement, […]
Obama Wants Statisticians!
“Politics as done by Martians.” That’s Peggy Noonan’s phrase, to describe President Obama’s call for and use of statisticians and data miners in his re-election campaign. The hiring of such as I […]
The Environmentalist Fallacy Causing Global Warming Divide To Grow
A headline lifted from an MS-“Bias free”-NBC story: “Americans’ divide over global warming getting deeper” (linked on HotAir). Subtitle: “Despite onslaught of science, resistance to the idea seems to be hardening.” An […]
America’s Security and Taiwan’s Freedom — Guest Post by June Teufel Dreyer
We return to a topic which is of more importance than you want it to be: the possibility of Chinese belligerence. June Teufel Dreyer is a political science professor at the University […]
The Purpose Of All Statistics. Ithaca Teaching Journal, Day5
First, and most strongly, probability need not have anything to do with data. For example, we can compute a value for the probability that “Matt wears a hat” given the assumed evidence […]
The Trolley Problem And Experimental Philosophy
The Trolley Problem, as given by Eric Schwitzgebel (as part of a larger survey): You are standing by the railroad tracks when you notice an empty boxcar rolling out of control. It […]
What Is A “Climate Change Skeptic”? Assist With Definition
As requested by Richard Drake and J Ferguson, who began a conversation on a similar topic last week, this new post asks what is the best “opinion poll-ready definition of climate skeptic.” […]
First Things’ Tournament of Novels: Get ’em While You Can
First Things’ Joe Carter is running an amusing contest pitting great (and not so great) novels against one another, knock-out tournament style. As of this writing, he’s up to Round 3 (Round […]
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