F train Blues, Michael Palin is proud, and some misuses of statistics
Just back from my trip. I'll go through the comments from last week's posts later today and catch up. Meanwhile, here are a few interesting stories. That F'ing train! You've…
Posted inStatistics
Podcast Lecture #1: Understanding Statistics and Probability
[podcast]https://www.wmbriggs.com/audio/wmbriggs_com_lecture_0001.mp3[/podcast] First lecture: I'm away to a conference this week, and so thought it would be fun to start a lecture series Understanding Statistics and Probability (this is posting automatically---I'll…
Podcast Radio Show – Episode #3: Call the Health Police!
[podcast]https://www.wmbriggs.com/audio/wmbriggs_com_07oct2009_0003.mp3[/podcast] On today's episode: What is health? Herr Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore: "a degree of adaptation to the organism's environment so nearly complete that there is no irritation." Health…
Posted inCulture
The Case of the Rape-rape Patrol: a 17th precinct mini-mystery
We last met Officer Hannigan and Sergeant Fitzgerald in The Case of the Missing Global Warming and The Age of Stupid "Sarge, we got a call." Officer Hannigan motioned to…
Posted inStatistics
About Half Will Not Pay Federal Income Tax: Plus, A Solution To This Unfairness
What's to stop a large bloc of voters from joining forces to create laws so that they get a free ride, that they, in effect, make everybody else pay their…
Posted inPodcast Statistics
Podcast Radio Show – Episode #2: The Limits of Human Knowledge and The Singularity
[podcast]https://www.wmbriggs.com/audio/wmbriggs_com_30sep2009_0002.mp3[/podcast] On today's show: Update 3 Oct: The show appears to be available on iTunes. Search Podcasts for "Briggs" under "Title." If anybody has difficulties downloading, please let me know.…
Posted inCulture
The Theory of Increasing Government Idiocy
In software, it's called feature creep. This is the bloat or encrustation that forms on a working computer program. It is caused by adding overly specific functions that originate with…