Statistics – Page 194 – William M. Briggs

What That Spurious Correlation Website Tells Us About Statistics

Many (thanks!) readers sent links to Tyler Vigen's Spurious Correlations, whose motto is "Discover a new correlation - an interesting spurious correlation each day!" My favorite is tying the yearly…

Fun Statistics

Godzilla’s Changing Height: A Statistical Analysis

I grew up watching Channel 50's Creature Feature and Channel 7's 4 pm Monster Week movies, many of which featured Ultraman, Rodan, Gamera, Gargantua, and, of course, Godzilla. Too, I…

Philosophy Statistics

Frequentists Are Closet Bayesians: Confidence Interval Edition

Actually, all frequentists and Bayesians are logical probabilists, but if I put that in the title, few would believe it. A man might call himself an Anti-Gravitational Theorist, a science…

Statistics

William M. Briggs Sez: Keep That Impressive Middle Initial

You can take it from William M. Briggs, and also from the Today show: sporting a middle initial is a mark of sophistication, intelligence, and rugged manliness---or womanliness, as the…

Statistics

Researchers: Calling Girls Fat Makes Them Fat

Whatever you do, don't call somebody a "researcher". It could condemn them to a nasty, brutish, and short-tempered life. The kind where most of their time is spent scrambling for…

Statistics

Time Series And Causality: Global Warming Example

Temperature causes Here is an atmospheric monthly average temperature series: T = (61, 69, 69, 70, 72, 65, 63) (all F). What caused the temperature to take the value T1…

Statistics

Time Series Aren’t Easy: Tornado Deaths Example

Time series are the most abused statistics in the physical sciences. (It's an endless, raucous, peer-reviewed contest for the worst in the "soft sciences.") The Mann problem (is that a…

Philosophy Statistics

Physical Probability Doesn’t Exist

There have been many attempts to tie probability to physical chance. Here, briefly and for discussion, is why I think all of them fail. Ontology does not recapitulate epistemology Let…

Ronald Conneely on Black Women Can’t Do Physics As Well As White Men, Says ResearcherNovember 20, 2025
Great analysis as usual but be careful, you are bordering on that dreded (R----t) area. Would hate to lose your…
Williis Eschenbach on Class 72: Most Claims Of “Controlled For” Are Wrong: The Wrong WayNovember 20, 2025
Thanks, Matt, that's what I figured, just wanted to verify it. w.
Briggs on Class 72: Most Claims Of “Controlled For” Are Wrong: The Wrong WayNovember 20, 2025
Willis, Sure, you can change the model to remove the probability leakage. Careful modelers would. The vast majority would not,…
William Ward Eschenbach on Class 72: Most Claims Of “Controlled For” Are Wrong: The Wrong WayNovember 20, 2025
As usual, most fascinating. This may be a foolish question, but since the minimum score is 200, what happens if…
KGB on Black Women Can’t Do Physics As Well As White Men, Says ResearcherNovember 20, 2025
And if my aunt had balls...