William M. Briggs

The sad decline of music: Cole Porter vs. The Beatles

Paul McCartney has once again crept upon our shores. He was, of course, vanguard in the original "British Invasion", which occurred in early 1964. Now, an invasion is something to…

Philosophy

The strange insignificance of statistical significance

Who is more likely to support the death penalty: college undergraduates from a "nationally-ranked Midwestern university with an enrollment of slightly more than 20,000" majoring in social work, or those…

Statistics

Hannah Arendt on global warming theory

...there are, indeed, few things that are more frightening than the steadily increasing prestige of scientifically minded brain trusters in the councils of government during the last decades. The trouble…

Fun

A Return to Seriousness: 7 Best Songs About Beer; Or, God Bless the Pope

Update: the embeddings have been shifted to links, because the embeddings were eating up too much memory on some people's browsers. 7 John Lee Hooker/George Thorogood, One Bourbon, One Scotch,…

Philosophy

Randomness isn’t in charge of anything: the “hot hand” in basketball

The Wall Street Journal is helping Leonard Mlodinow tout his book The Drunkardâ€™s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Among other things, Mlodinow, like academics Tversky, Kahneman, and Gilovich before…

Fun

Internet Advertising Company to Fund Itself With Advertising

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Internet Advertising Company to Fund Itself With Advertising New York - July 4, 2009 - Word leader in being a new company engaged in ways of bringing…

Book review

Public Enemies — by Bryan Burrough

I am re-posting this book review because the movie came out today, and it might be of interest. Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI,…

Statistics

The MIT Dahn Yoga Brain Respiration Experiment: Part I

This series originally begin 3 January 2009. This is only Part I; the remaining parts are linked below. INTRODUCTION On 20 September 2004, in the Physics Department at MIT, sponsored…

gareth on Class 73: How To Tell If You Have Bad DiceDecember 7, 2025
Beware anything that says "install.packages('')" Only yesterday I went to install an upgrade of some VNC package. "1 to install,…
John Pate on Class 73: How To Tell If You Have Bad DiceDecember 6, 2025
The problem came when computers made it easy to plug numbers without you really knowing what you're doing. It became…
Rudolph Harrier on Class 73: How To Tell If You Have Bad DiceDecember 6, 2025
I think the problem is that many people want to have a consistent process above all else. They don't want…
John Pate on Class 73: How To Tell If You Have Bad DiceDecember 5, 2025
You would have been in your element Briggs. I was quite heavily into the statistics nonsense at the time due…
Briggs on Class 73: How To Tell If You Have Bad DiceDecember 5, 2025
John, Now that's very interesting. I would have loved to have heard that talk.

William M. Briggs

Class 73: How To Tell If You Have Bad Dice

Academic Proposes Mushrooms To Avoid Compulsory Moral Bioenhancement

The Michigan Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Is Wrong: “Guns” are not the leading cause of death in kids

The Perfect Conspiracy Theory

Old Lodge Skins’ Prayer Of Thanksgiving

The Apples In A Sack Paradox: Solve It Or You Get No Pie Tomorrow

Antichrist, by Saint Robert Bellarmine

Donald vs Ishmael vs Esau — Guest Post by Ianto Watt

Class 72: Most Claims Of “Controlled For” Are Wrong: The Wrong Way

Black Women Can’t Do Physics As Well As White Men, Says Researcher

On That “Bombshell German Study” That “Exposes the PCR Test Fraud That Locked Down the World”

Masking Morality With Science: Men Pretending To Be Women In Sports

Why Study Probability?

The Dysgenics Of IVF

In Which An Atheist Becomes Sputteringly Angry Over Theist’s Argument

Academics Debate Which Term Best Describes Those Who Love (in that way) Their Pillows

Class 71: Never Trust ‘Research Shows’ Headlines: We Bring Cause To Data

Diversity Patrol Scanning Citations For Victims

Little Nate’s Plan To Save The World

Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education Causes Mass Squealing

Stay The Course: Have Some Class