William M. Briggs

Differences In Brains Between Believers And Atheists?

The following question was posed at the (inaptly named) magazine Scientific American, "Is there a difference between the brain of an atheist and the brain of a religious person?" It…

Fun

First Signs of Rampant Global Cooling Seen At Nome, Alaska?

The headline from the 12 January 2012 Nome Nugget ("Alaska's Oldest Newspaper!") strikes a chill into one's heart: Nome in long deep freeze. The Nome post of the National…

Philosophy Statistics

Curtis’s The Science Of Subjectivity

An unfocused post today; just some notes on a paper. Busy day for me. Andrew Curtis wrote, "The science of subjectivity" in the January 2012 issue of the journal Geology…

Philosophy Statistics

What’s The Difference Between A Confidence Interval And A Credible Interval? Update

Twitter @ceptional reminded me of this post, which I had forgotten. Since it is highly relevant to The Great Bayesian Switch, I decided to repost. Some minor errors in grammar…

Culture Philosophy Statistics

The Great Bayesian Switch

Update: See this post on the definition of confidence and credible intervals. Submitted for your approval, a new paper. A polemic describing in nascent terms the paradise that awaits us…

Statistics

What A Prediction Is And What It Is Not: Part IV

There is a technical distinction between a scenario and a prediction, though the line is fine and often disputable. Many scenarios are merely intolerably loose, and therefore useless, predictions. The…

Philosophy Statistics

What A Prediction Is And What It Is Not: Part III

This inescapable fact, that the conditioning evidence is only assumed and is therefore subjectively defined, is responsible for much acrimony about accuracy. Thus the reason we attempt to eliminate wiggle…

Philosophy Statistics

What A Prediction Is And What It Is Not: Part II

Thanks to DAV for reminding me of a clarification. See yesterday's comments. This post is mostly bookkeeping. Tomorrow we do more examples. Sometimes, in contracts as in predictions, certain "unexpected…

Brian (bulaoren) on Truly Random Numbers Found?June 15, 2026
Wait...Does this mean that all those non-winning lottery tickets, I've bought over the years, were drawn from non-randomly-generated numbers? I…
McChuck on Truly Random Numbers Found?June 15, 2026
What QM leaves out of their "randomness is fundamental" picture is the state of the entire rest of the universe.…
John M on Climate Change Increases Risk of Even Slower World Cup Games!June 15, 2026
LarryG, I appreciate that sport and game participants can enjoy their favorite activity but that doesn't make the activity entertaining.
JR Ewing on Truly Random Numbers Found?June 15, 2026
I'm not a fan of airport security pantomime. There are a lot of things about it that I don't like,…
LarryG on Climate Change Increases Risk of Even Slower World Cup Games!June 14, 2026
The provincial and parochial attitude of Americans towards soccer perplexes me. It’s a great sport. High school: football, sat on…

William M. Briggs

Truly Random Numbers Found?

Class 91: Try Not To Use the ROC Curve & AUC

Climate Change Increases Risk of Even Slower World Cup Games!

The Ultimate IQ Test: Guessing the Author’s Mind and Escaping the Infinity of Answers

Reader Poll: Shorter or Longer, Frequent or Rarer Posts?

No Model Will Save Us: Pope Leo, the Miserostat, and AI’s Woke Coders

How High an IQ Must A Person Have To Be Executed?

Class 90: Simple (Optimal) Decisions

Shocking Abortion Numbers: Death Distributions Show We’re Living Longer

Blessed Memorial Day; No Class; See You Wednesday

Why There Are (Probably) No UFOs: “Climate Change”

Creating Microbial Monsters To Terrorize Ourselves

Class 89: The Measure Most Modelers Forget: Skill Examples

The Shocking Conclusion of the HR Trilemma!

The HR Trilemma: Which Door Decides Your Fate?

Capital Punishment Deters Crime More Than The Death Penalty

How Experts Use “Calamities” to Find Official Victims & Gain Power

Richard Dawkins, The Big Muscles Fallacy & AI Pachinko

Class 88: The Most Neglected Concept: Skill

The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising Answer

UFO Reports About To Blast Off!

Truly Random Numbers Found?

Class 91: Try Not To Use the ROC Curve & AUC

Differences In Brains Between Believers And Atheists?

First Signs of Rampant Global Cooling Seen At Nome, Alaska?

Curtis’s The Science Of Subjectivity

What’s The Difference Between A Confidence Interval And A Credible Interval? Update

The Great Bayesian Switch

What A Prediction Is And What It Is Not: Part IV

What A Prediction Is And What It Is Not: Part III

What A Prediction Is And What It Is Not: Part II

There Is No Culture Without Inequality: Stove 1

Impose Your Beliefs Before They Impose Theirs

Telekinesis: Ideas In Our Reenchantment & Rectification

The Physics Of Blessings: Ideas In Our Reenchantment & Rectification