Statistics – Page 185 – William M. Briggs

Calculating Markov Chain Stationary Distributions Is Immoral?

No, I don't think so, but the Census Bureau thought (thinks?) as much. What follows is one of the more curious emails I've received, describing the experiences of Juan (not…

Philosophy Statistics

Answering A Critic On Sampling Variability

Alfred 'Dominant Strategy' (ADS) is confused that "William Briggs is confused on sampling variability". I wrote an article highlighting misconceptions and mistakes people make when thinking about sampling variability, and…

Culture Philosophy Statistics

Bad Arguments Against The Death Penalty: Update

Big news is that both lefty and righty Catholic news sources banded together last week to issue an editorial "Capital Punishment Must End". The subject is enormous; there is no…

Culture Statistics

Race Norming At Universities And The Doctrine Of Unintended Consequences

The Los Angeles Times had a story about how hard East Asians have to work to be admitted to college. Problem is these kids are too smart, an attitude which…

Philosophy Statistics

Sampling Variability Is A Screwy, Misleading Concept

https://twitter.com/Bigdatanalysis/status/573739862924353536 Because of travel and jet lag, exacerbated by "springing forward", we continue our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles next week. If you can't read the tweet above, it says…

Statistics

Can Microbes Manipulate Minds? Guest Post by Petro Starokadomskyy

Starokadomskyy is at the Department of Internal Medicine, UT Southwestern Medical Center. He writes about his work in the area our original post "Decline Of Participation In Religious Rituals With…

Statistics

Der Spiegel Asks About Global-Warming-Causes-Syrian-Civil-War Paper

That peer-reviewed Colin Kelley et al. paper "Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought", which the traddy media is portraying like Wired did---e.g. How…

Statistics

Journal Bans Wee P-values—And Confidence Intervals! Break Out The Champagne!

Well, it banned all p-values, wee or not. And confidence intervals! The journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology, that is. Specifically, they axed the "null hypothesis significance testing procedure".…

Cary D Cotterman on On Not ReadingMarch 11, 2026
I'm at least your age, probably older, and I read both novels and non fiction constantly. I've made the mistake…
Peter Aiello on On Not ReadingMarch 11, 2026
When I was growing up, being an avid reader was touted as the way to success in life. I was…
McChuck on On Not ReadingMarch 11, 2026
It's not just you. SciFi and Fantasy died in the 1980's, and was buried under a mountain of dreck in…
NLR on The Great Smoothing: Another Reason Not To Fear (or trust) AIMarch 11, 2026
"AI" will not come alive, but also, it has been over three years and none of the "AI" predictions have…
Johnno on The Great Smoothing: Another Reason Not To Fear (or trust) AIMarch 10, 2026
I'm panicking about the people who believe enthusiastically in the capabilities of the AI that the other people are panicking…