Statistics – Page 214 – William M. Briggs

What Is And What We Know Of It, Probabilistically Speaking

Ontology is the study of what is and what is not. Epistemology is the study of our knowledge of what is and what is not. Though there are obvious points…

Statistics

Is It Okay To Force A Baker To Sell Cakes In Violation Of His Religious Conscience?

Here's the setup: a Colorado judge has ordered a Christian man and owner of a bakery that he must bake cakes for homosexual civil ceremonies (homosexual "marriage" is illegal in…

Statistics

The Top Five Mistakes In Marketing Statistics

Forgive me the title, won't you? It is my own creation, I admit, but numbered promises are eminently clickable. Plus they are the norm in business writing. Anyway, the real…

Culture Statistics

Scientism, Legalism and Precaution: Regulating Nutrition and Health Claims in Europe

Announcing a new paper, with official title "Scientism, Legalism and Precaution -- Contending with Regulating Nutrition and Health Claims in Europe" in European Food and Feed Law Review by Jaap…

Statistics

Twenty Tips For Interpreting Scientific Claims

Title of today's post is taken from article of the same name in Nature by William Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter, Mark Burgman. Several readers asked me to comment. I'll assume you've…

Culture Philosophy Statistics

Friedrich A. Hayek’s Lecture “The Pretense of Knowledge”

This was reprinted in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. I've chopped it into parts for commenting. To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the…

Philosophy Statistics

What Random Means In Random Number Generation

Thinking about one-time pads reminded me to point this out. It's simple, really. A "random" number generator spits out a string of numbers or characters from some set, say c1,…

Statistics

A Survey Of The Perceptions Of Climate Scientists 2013: No Consensus

Earlier this year scientists were given a survey on their opinion of the state of climate science. This was administered by Dennis Bray & Hans von Storch at the Helmholtz…

Johnno on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 21, 2026
" I have never been a conspiracy theorist, for the simple fact that keeping secrets with multiple (tens, hundreds, and…
Brian (bulaoren) on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
@Cary Motorcycle accident? No, that was due to covid.
Cary D Cotterman on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
In the mid '70s I was the janitor at Cal Tech's Kerkhoff Marine Laboratory, where they studied the effects of…
Brian (bulaoren) on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
I'm waiting for members of the California Coastal Commission to start disappearing.
Bill Hankel on What Are The Chances Of All These Scientists Dying, Killed, Or Going Missing?April 20, 2026
Thank you for your application of common sense (and math!) to this issue. I have never been a conspiracy theorist,…