Statistics – Page 214 – William M. Briggs

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…

Culture Statistics

A New Possible Solution Of Fermi’s Paradox

What is the probability the following proposition is true? ``There are rational beings other than humans in the universe." Well, given the evidence of angels, who are rational non-human beings,…

Philosophy Statistics

Correlation Implies Causation

A version of this post originally appeared on 20 October 2012. But after a Twitter conversation with our friend @Neuro_Skeptic, it's time for an addition. Comes a Salon article entitled…

Brian (bulaoren) on The Solution To EvolutionNovember 2, 2026
As flies to wanton boys are we to evolutionists...
Uncle Mike on The Solution To EvolutionNovember 2, 2026
Good call, Mr. Rhodes. Readers, please search Darwinian Fairytales. A wonderful rabbit hole awaits you.
Mark Rhodes on The Solution To EvolutionNovember 2, 2026
Stove’s book is Darwinian Fairytales, not Darwinian Fantasies. Doesn’t change the point you were making, but if it aroused one…
The Solution To Evolution – William M. Briggs on Don’t Panic, But Intelligent Design Is Trivially True (Breathe, Breathe…)November 2, 2026
[…] from the beginning. It had to be, or we would never have gotten water. (I tried making this point…
Brian (bulaoren) on Class 99: Entropy Part IOctober 31, 2026
During the summer of 1977, I was living with a woman who had a 2 year old daughter. My brother,…