Briggs

Google’s Eric Schmidt & Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel Blaze Path Of Ugliness

This is a picture of Google's Eric Schmidt & Chicago's Rahm "Crisis" Emanuel from today's Wall Street Journal story Google Move Buoys Chicago Tech Hub. Chicago! The city of the…

Culture

The Chicago Way With Chik-Fil-A

There is a sense in which we all argue that is statistical. For instance, if we say of a group that it sports an "arrogant attitude" we do not mean…

Philosophy Statistics

True Value Of A Parameter

Jelle de Jong writes in to ask: Working as a quant analyst in finance I recently got interested in the Briggsian/Jaynesian/Bayesian interpretation of probability but am still struggling a bit…

Philosophy Statistics

What Probably Isnâ€™t: Heat Waves and Nine Feet Tall Men: Part II

McKibben's Folly Suppose it is true that we have E = "A six-sided object, just one side of which is labeled 6, and when tossed only one side will show."…

Philosophy Statistics

What Probably Isn’t: Heat Waves and Nine Feet Tall Men: Part I

Probability is screwy, and we statisticians do a horrible, rotten job of teaching it. The first thing students learn in normal statistics classes is about "measures of central tendency" or…

Statistics

Men Nine Feet Tall And Bayes Theorem

The OFloinn put up a most readable and recommended essay When is Weather Really "Climate"? and in one of the comments a reader named Gyan in part said: Many economists…

Culture Statistics

The Decline And Increase Of Mainstream Religions In The USA: With Pictures!

The Episcopals, like many other old guard protesting religions, are in trouble. Jay Akasie tells us that at this year's annual conclave, the Episcopalian leadership had their most serious discussions…

Philosophy Statistics

Certainty & Uncertainty: Logical Probability & Statistics

Since we have spent the weekend with these matters, I thought it appropriate to include the first part of the Introduction to the new book I've been working on. It…

tfc on Class 88: The Most Neglected Concept: SkillMay 1, 2026
Wow. Americans say the Soviet Union was a huge success.
John Pate on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 30, 2026
I would press the red button because it's the red button. The bigger the red button the harder you hit…
Polybius II on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
"their Other Lives’ Value premise is something vague about man, but not men" I am reminded of a british comedian…
Johnno on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
But do we get time to explain to everyone and have them all sit down and have a discussion before…
gareth on Class 87: Calibration & Conformal Prediction: ExamplesApril 29, 2026
Timestamp 21:35: A "correction" from 0.8 to 1.0 is a "correction factor" of 1.25, not 0.2 (akshully wot you mean…