Posted inCulture Philosophy Statistics
Wisdom Of The Crowds (And Voting)
Have you heard of Mesd-su-Re? One of the participants of the Great Harem Conspiracy under Ramses III? Probably not. But I need to know the length of his nose right…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Regression Really Is: Part III
Read Part II Which x's to pick? Unfortunately, there is an infinite universe from which to draw---and here we come closer to resembles. It could be, for instance, a person's…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Regression Really Is: Part II
Read Part I Let's continue our example. Suppose our regression shows that the probability of a Hate score greater than 5 is 60% for men and 80% for women---for people…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Causation And Correlation
Our friend Christopher Monckton of Brenchley wrote a piece over at Anthony Watt's place in which he said (Reader KA Rodgers asked me to have a look): CO2 concentration continues…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
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…
Posted inCulture 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…
Posted inPhilosophy 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,…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Observational Versus Controlled Trials
Received this email from a reader: I took on board all I read on your website, and it has created confusion in my mind. I have been reading Ioannidis and…