Posted inPhilosophy
Is the Arizona Immigration Law Racist?
Is the Arizona law racist? Not only no, but obviously no. For the simple logical reason that a law cannot be racist, only people can. For example, suppose our betters…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Replacements for Representation: Bayes From the Ground Up
A primary justification for Bayesian probability is De Finetti's representation theorem, which is stated like this. You are to observe a sequence of 0s and 1s, "failures" and "successes" if…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Finitism, Physics, Cellular Automata: The Universe as Logic
In no way is this article meant to be complete. It is more in the way of musings---a crude introduction---so that we can see where to go. Is the universe…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Postmodernism and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
Since I am, by nature, a compassionate individual, I had been thinking of how we might Sokal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). It is for their…
Posted inStatistics
Feigned Surprises of the Week: Journolist and Our New Tax
Said the main-stream journalist on Journolist, "If they of the right wing don't behave and treat our Golden Boy properly, we'll call them racists. It matters not whom we pick…
Posted inFun Statistics
A Bust—I mean must—Read; Or, An Evolution in Bra Sizes
"Excuse me, miss. Would you care to participate in science?" Sometimes being a statistician is enviable. In a flash of scientific brilliance, Australian statisticians have just completed a massive study…
Posted inFun Statistics
M. Night Shyamalan, Mel Gibson, and John Wayne
Part II of the Two-Envelope problem was not too friendly, so here's something that is. Via HotAir, I came across the site Marginal Revolution, in which was featured a graph…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
The Two-Envelope Problem Solution: Part II
Read Part I first. We are in the peek first game here. The distribution of N When X is odd, and all X are discrete, we know we should always…