Statistics – Page 146 – William M. Briggs

The Epidemiologist Fallacy Strikes Again: Premature Birth Rate Edition

Hypothesis testing leads to more scientific nonsense than any other practice, including fraud. Hypothesis testing, as regular readers know, cannot identify cause. It conflates decision with probability and leads to…

Class Statistics

Lovely Example of Statistics Gone Bad

The graph above (biggified version here) was touted by Simon Kuestenmacher (who posts many beautiful maps). He said "This plot shows the objects that were found to be 'the most…

Statistics

Why Younger Evangelicals Waver in Support for Israel

Update It appears some think I believe unquestioning support of Israel is a good thing, or that I agree with evangelical interpretations of prophecy. If so, I wrote badly. This…

Other Practical Books On Par With <em>Uncertainty</em>? Reader Question

Fun Statistics

Other Practical Books On Par With Uncertainty? Reader Question

Got this email from VD. I've edited to remove any personal information and to add blog-standard style and links. I answered, and I remind all readers of the on-going claassre,…

Statistics

Manipulating the Alpha Level Cannot Cure Significance Testing

Nothing can cure significance testing. Except a bullet to the p-value. (That sound you heard was from readers pretending to swoon.) The paper is out and official---and free!: "Manipulating the…

Class Statistics

Choose Predictive Over Parametric Every Time

Gaze and wonder at picture which heads this article, which I lifted from John Haman's nifty R package ciTools. The numbers in the plot are made up whole cloth to…

Inference To The Best Explanation: Shapiro’s <em>The Miracle Myth</em> Reviewed — Part II

Book review Philosophy Statistics

Inference To The Best Explanation: Shapiro’s The Miracle Myth Reviewed — Part II

Read Part I. A researcher puts you into a room. On the table is a blue ball. Somebody put it there. It could have been Alice, Bob, or Charlie. Given…

Statistics

People Are Less Religious When Government Is Bigger

This is making the news. A guy we've seen before is up to his usual statistical shenanigans in the peer-reviewed paper "Religion as an Exchange System: The Interchangeability of God…

JH on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
The alternative to preserved clay is, sooner rather than later, mouldy clay… Does this mean to create fear? There are…
Cary Cotterman on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
Growing up in the late 1950s, I played with modeling clay almost every day. Who knows, back then it was…
Phil R on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
I'm no expert but I think it's a little over the top comparing PFAS with Agent Orange. PFAS, for the…
Tars Tarkas on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
None of this should change the fact that chemical companies like 3M actively covered up the PFAS problem in the…
Ray on Politicians Demand “Right” To Be Protected Against AISeptember 16, 2026
As far as I can tell, AI is nothing but a computer with a big data base and some fancy…