Statistics – Page 183 – William M. Briggs

Godzilla’s Changing Height: A Statistical Analysis

I grew up watching Channel 50's Creature Feature and Channel 7's 4 pm Monster Week movies, many of which featured Ultraman, Rodan, Gamera, Gargantua, and, of course, Godzilla. Too, I…

Philosophy Statistics

Frequentists Are Closet Bayesians: Confidence Interval Edition

Actually, all frequentists and Bayesians are logical probabilists, but if I put that in the title, few would believe it. A man might call himself an Anti-Gravitational Theorist, a science…

Statistics

William M. Briggs Sez: Keep That Impressive Middle Initial

You can take it from William M. Briggs, and also from the Today show: sporting a middle initial is a mark of sophistication, intelligence, and rugged manliness---or womanliness, as the…

Statistics

Researchers: Calling Girls Fat Makes Them Fat

Whatever you do, don't call somebody a "researcher". It could condemn them to a nasty, brutish, and short-tempered life. The kind where most of their time is spent scrambling for…

Statistics

Time Series And Causality: Global Warming Example

Temperature causes Here is an atmospheric monthly average temperature series: T = (61, 69, 69, 70, 72, 65, 63) (all F). What caused the temperature to take the value T1…

Statistics

Time Series Aren’t Easy: Tornado Deaths Example

Time series are the most abused statistics in the physical sciences. (It's an endless, raucous, peer-reviewed contest for the worst in the "soft sciences.") The Mann problem (is that a…

Philosophy Statistics

Physical Probability Doesn’t Exist

There have been many attempts to tie probability to physical chance. Here, briefly and for discussion, is why I think all of them fail. Ontology does not recapitulate epistemology Let…

Culture Statistics

A New Possible Solution Of Fermi’s Paradox

What is the probability the following proposition is true? ``There are rational beings other than humans in the universe." Well, given the evidence of angels, who are rational non-human beings,…

John W. Garrett on The Hubris Of Experts: NIH EditionJune 17, 2025
Yikes. Maybe the Rockefellers, the Hewletts, the Packards, Jeremy Grantham, Eric & Wendy Schmidt, the Waltons, Leo DiCaprio, Mike Bloomberg…
cdquarles on The Hubris Of Experts: NIH EditionJune 17, 2025
There was a wise politician who warned us about the government-media-academia complex over 60 years ago. That's right, the other…
McChuck on The Hubris Of Experts: NIH EditionJune 17, 2025
Remember, kids, a scientist is nothing more than an academic with a lab coat. Academics are people who have been…
NLR on The Hubris Of Experts: NIH EditionJune 17, 2025
Certainly, the science-industrial-government-university complex is corrupt. The criticism of it is all warranted. But even worse than expensive and frivolous…
Briggs on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 16, 2025
Paul, You're right. It sucked. I'm redoing. JH, Very well. Construct for us a model that does not do what…