William M. Briggs

On The Uselessness Of Lie Detector (And Medical) Screenings, And The Ames Spy Case

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr8BUxVRwFY This post is one that has been restored after the hacking. All original comments were lost. Have you seen the television series The Assets? Dramatization of the Sandy Grimes-Jeanne…

Statistics

How’d We Do On Our 2014 Predictions?

This post is one that has been restored after the hacking. All original comments were lost. Time to tally. As has become our tradition, each New Year's Eve we see…

Culture

Pope Francis And Out-Of-Control Deadly Eschatological Global Warming

This post is one that has been restored after the hacking. All original comments were lost. The press, fond as they are of reporting wild speculation as actual news, has…

Statistics

Monty Hall And This Video Prove Probability Is Measure Of Truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-I0bAuEUE This post is one that has been restored after the hacking. All original comments were lost. This post is really an excuse to highlight a cute video that's being…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: That God Is Good

See the first post in this series for an explanation and guide of our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles. All posts are under the category SAMT. This post is one…

Fun

Manly Things, Northern Michigan Edition

This post is one that has been restored after the hacking. All original comments were lost. My number one son sent me the video above (linked here). Can you imagine…

Culture Philosophy

Pascal’s Pensées, A Tour: IV

Since our walk through Summa Contra Gentiles is going so well, why not let's do the same with Pascal's sketchbook on what we can now call Thinking Thursdays. We'll use…

Philosophy Statistics

Improper Language About Priors

Suppose you decided (almost surely by some ad hoc rule) that the uncertainty in some thing (call it y) is best quantified by a normal distribution with central parameter θ…

John Pate on Class 98: Limitations of Genetic Associations With PersonalityOctober 23, 2026
The plasticity available in the brain and CNS is the confounding factor. Nature via nurture. What actually gets expressed is…
Brian (bulaoren) on Class 98: Limitations of Genetic Associations With PersonalityOctober 22, 2026
Across the world, many jurisdictions ban pet "pit bulls". Are they in error?
NLR on Against Numerology: Some Basic CalculationsOctober 19, 2026
The mathematician Richard Guy wrote a paper "The strong law of small numbers", where he said, facetiously, but also serirously:…
aGrimm on Book UpdateOctober 16, 2026
I'm looking forward to the book; warts and all the first was enlightening and fun to read.
John Pate on Book UpdateOctober 14, 2026
I'm a big fan of LaTeX. I wrote a class package that made it into one or more of the…

William M. Briggs

Class 98: Limitations of Genetic Associations With Personality

I’m Thinking Of A Number Between 1 and 5 (that you can’t guess)

Against Numerology: Some Basic Calculations

Class 97: The Goal Of Models

Book Update

Sexual Assault Galore At Cornell

Class 96: Can Bayesianism Quantify True Belief?

Top 10 Reasons AI Will Never Become Superintelligence: It Won’t Destroy Nor Save Us

Viewer Asks: Why Do I Bother?

Academics Call For The Killing Of Babies In “After-Birth” Abortions

Irrational Rationalists: Effective Altruists & The Planet of the Ants

Class 95: Answering P-Value Good Uses Challenges

Whoring For Climate Change

Lady Academics Tire Of Being Judged By Peer Review

Class 94: Quantifying The Unquantifiable

PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap Hanekamp

The MRS Degree — Guest Post by Johnathan Edwards

Politicians Demand “Right” To Be Protected Against AI

Class 93: P-values Challenge! List The “Good Uses” of P-value

Is the West Dying Out? The Demographic Crisis Explained: Jon Harris Podcast

Lindsay Clancy Strangled Her Kids Because Of “Climate Change”