Last week of teaching! Randomness is not a cause. Neither is chance. It is always a mistake to say things like “explainable by chance”, “random change”, “the differences are random”, “unlikely to […]
Randomness And The “Null” Hypothesis
The Mysticism Of Simulations: Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Sampling, And Their Alternatives
Introit Ever heard of somebody “simulating” normal “random” or “stochastic” variables, or perhaps “drawing” from a normal or some other distribution? Such things form the backbone of many statistical methods, including bootstrapping, […]
Jerry Coyne Has A Go At Pope Francis. Shoots Self In Foot
Since it’s Halloween, we may as well examine the spooks, hobgoblins, and bogeymen which taunt and haunt the minds of our public undead, which is to say, our intellectuals. Now no one […]
Evolution Under Fixed Constraints; Or, Why Random Changes Don’t Cut It
See if this analogy makes sense. A ramp onto which you loose a ball, which can roll down and fall into one of three slots. The configuration is such that the ball […]
On Nate Silver’s Predictions: Which Side Of The Probability Equation Are We On?
When I checked FiveThirtyEight.com’s Senate prediction, it said “Republicans have a 72.3% chance of winning a majority.” There were also words that the “probability that each party will win control of the […]
The Intellectual Capacity Of Women by David Stove
Jim Franklin hosted this classic essay of the late David Stove’s for many years. But he received a complaint from one of the intellectually Tolerant. As Franklin said on this site, “An […]
The Hot Hand: Statistical Fluke Or Genuine Article?
I’ll save you hunting through the text. It’s a real thing. If you want to know why, read on. If not, you just tell ’em W.M. Briggs sez so, which is enough […]
Free Will The Result Of ‘Background Noise’?
Once again the lack of metaphysical training has led some scientists to say an incredibly silly thing. That free will “could be the result of ‘background noise’ in the brain.” According to […]
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