Statistics – Page 262 – William M. Briggs

Hurricane Predictors Admit They Can’t Predict Hurricanes

My heart soared like a hawk1 after learning that Messieurs Philip Klotzbach and William Gray have admitted in print the hardest thing scientists can ever confess. That they were wrong.…

Statistics

CARB Misinterprets Statistics, Calls For Elimination Of Dust

The California Air Resources Board, or CARB, has issued a press release that shows how easy it is to misunderstand statistics. That most do---fail to comprehend what statistical results are…

Fun Statistics

Are Moneylines Useful In Predicting NFL Games?

Today's post is over at Edgehogs. I wanted to know how good moneylines were at predicting wins and loses. Since Las Vegas is still in business, it was a good…

Statistics

Increasing Replication Of Un-Reproducibility In Science

Best science picture of the year, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal (and thanks to reader Dan Hughes): In just the last decade---ten mere years---the number of "peer-reviewed" journal articles…

Statistics

Geo-engineering The Climate: Durban Global Warming Conference

A group of scientists, funded generously by Big Green, which includes the Environmental Defense Fund, have released a report to coincide with the efforts of the Durban Global Warming Conference,…

Fun Statistics

Are Experts Better At Predicting Sports Than Ordinary Fans?

Today's post is over at the new and, yes, improved Edgehogs.com. Our launch was a couple of months ago. Since that time we've got a good chunk of games and…

Statistics

What Is A True Model? What Makes A Good One?: Part VI Climate Model Focus

This is a technical addendum to the main series. I would have skipped this, but Climategate 2.0 revealed many misapprehensions of verification statistics that I want to clear up, particularly…

Philosophy Statistics

What Is A True Model? What Makes A Good One?: Part V

We have in our hands (via the predictive posterior) the probabilities that Susy's GPA is less than any number between 0 and 4, given that we accept the normal model…

John M on The Only Metric That Matters: Or, Pinker’s FollyMarch 17, 2026
"How many souls make it to Heaven" is an attribute that can't be expressed with variable data.
Brian (bulaoren) on The Only Metric That Matters: Or, Pinker’s FollyMarch 17, 2026
As it happens, Stephen Pinker and I were at the same university, around the same time. No, I don't recall…
bob sykes on The Only Metric That Matters: Or, Pinker’s FollyMarch 17, 2026
Humanism might be a better guide, if you are a high-IQ Greek philospher like Aristotle, or even Nietzsche. But for…
Uncle Mike on The Only Metric That Matters: Or, Pinker’s FollyMarch 17, 2026
"...the only metric that matters is how many souls make it to Heaven..." This metric is tough to measure. There's…
JH on The Only Metric That Matters: Or, Pinker’s FollyMarch 17, 2026
What Pinker missed was that if a religion is true, then living by its tenets is best. What does it…