Statistics – Page 264 – William M. Briggs

Contingency, Causality, Determinism, And Free Will

In thinking about what probability means, it's important to sort out what is contingent and what relationship contingent events have to causality. Contingency simply means that what is could have…

Philosophy Statistics

Bad News For Conservatives? Or Bad News For Rational Thought?

Let's examine Marcus Arvan's peer-reviewed paper, "Bad News for Conservatives? Moral Judgments and the Dark Triad Personality Traits: A Correlational Study", published in the 25 July 2011 issue of Neuroethics.…

Statistics

Global Warming, Asinine Science Roundup

Still in Taipei and a bit swamped. Here are some links that will be of interest; mostly provided by Willie Soon, Marc Morano, and readers just like you! Trenberth's Null…

Statistics

Two New Papers vs. BEST: Guest Post by Lüdecke, Link, and Ewert

Horst Lüdecke is a Professor of Physiker in EIKE, European Institute for Climate and Energy, Heidelberg; Dr. Link is a physicist with EIKE; Prof. Dr. Friedrich-Karl Ewert is a geologist…

Statistics

BEST And The Wall Street Journal’s Numbers Guy

Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal's Numbers Guy, has two columns about BEST's temperature reconstruction model: "Global Temperatures: All Over the Map" and "A New Trove of Global Temperature Numbers").…

Statistics

The Twinkie Defense Defended: Soda Pop And Violence In Teens

In 1979, Dan White1 was tried for the assassinations of San Francisco city district Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. His lawyers argued that he had diminished capacity and…

Fun Statistics

Counterfactuals And Woodchuck Probability Distributions

I have, with mechanical aid, again winged my way across the globe in search of treasure. I landed disoriented and would not trust myself to calculate even the integral of…

Fun Philosophy Statistics

Best Statistics Question Ever

Several readers have sent this one in1. One Raymond Johnson (or was it Ryan Grover?) said he found the following picture on this blackboard (I pulled my copy from Flowing…

Johnno 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." We can at…
Johnno on The Only Metric That Matters: Or, Pinker’s FollyMarch 17, 2026
"What does it mean to say that “a religion is true”? IF? does this imply there are fake religions?" Yes.…
Johnno on Lancet Discovers Public Health Is PoliticsMarch 17, 2026
Doctors also eat at McDonald's. I have seen them. I have evidence! I dare say, some even hold stock options…
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…