Briggs

Science Explains Belief In God Through Genetics

Let's look at "Life's Extremes: Atheists vs. Believers", a piece on Live Science (the home of unexpurgated university press releases; hat tip to HotAir). The article is itself slight---it begins…

Statistics

Geo-engineering The Climate: Durban Global Warming Conference

A group of scientists, funded generously by Big Green, which includes the Environmental Defense Fund, have released a report to coincide with the efforts of the Durban Global Warming Conference,…

Fun Statistics

Are Experts Better At Predicting Sports Than Ordinary Fans?

Today's post is over at the new and, yes, improved Edgehogs.com. Our launch was a couple of months ago. Since that time we've got a good chunk of games and…

Statistics

What Is A True Model? What Makes A Good One?: Part VI Climate Model Focus

This is a technical addendum to the main series. I would have skipped this, but Climategate 2.0 revealed many misapprehensions of verification statistics that I want to clear up, particularly…

Philosophy Statistics

What Is A True Model? What Makes A Good One?: Part V

We have in our hands (via the predictive posterior) the probabilities that Susy's GPA is less than any number between 0 and 4, given that we accept the normal model…

Philosophy Statistics

What Is A True Model? What Makes A Good One?: Part IV

In Part I we had the simplest kind of model. We complicated it in Part II, built more structure in Part III, and today finally come to the most used…

Philosophy Statistics

What Is A True Model? What Makes A Good One?: Part III

We have had two cases so far: arbitrary models for counterfactual Martians (Part I) and a deduced model for an urn holding dichotomous objects (Part II). The logic was identical…

Philosophy Statistics

What Is A True Model? What Makes A Good One?: Part II

The models in Part I might not have "felt right" to you. But if that is so it is because your diet of probability examples has been too narrowly constricted.…

Phil R on Test Your IQ With These Puzzles! (Not So Easy!)July 1, 2025
...and I saw 5 or 25 in the figure. The division answer never occurred to me. Got all the rest…
Phil R on Test Your IQ With These Puzzles! (Not So Easy!)July 1, 2025
If someone asks a question that is conditional on some evidence or rule that they conveniently (or purposely) leave out,…
McChuck on Test Your IQ With These Puzzles! (Not So Easy!)July 1, 2025
The answer for the pictured question is obviously '1', as the slot already has a '1' in it, which has…
Briggs on Test Your IQ With These Puzzles! (Not So Easy!)July 1, 2025
Mark, That's exactly it.
Mark on Test Your IQ With These Puzzles! (Not So Easy!)July 1, 2025
Wittgenstein gave some examples like this in his Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematics, a book I had no business…