Statistics – Page 186 – William M. Briggs

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,…

Philosophy Statistics

Correlation Implies Causation

A version of this post originally appeared on 20 October 2012. But after a Twitter conversation with our friend @Neuro_Skeptic, it's time for an addition. Comes a Salon article entitled…

NLR on Universities Need To Be Made To Lose PrestigeJuly 28, 2025
I'm not sure if Universities are all that prestigious anymore. Probably the height of the prestige of universities was either…
Cary Cotterman on Universities Need To Be Made To Lose PrestigeJuly 28, 2025
Parents obsessed with getting their kids into "elite" universities are fools. Today, I'd never hire anyone who had gone to…
Tars Tarkas on Universities Need To Be Made To Lose PrestigeJuly 28, 2025
The best way to allow the uni to DIE is to end the student loan program and ban foreign students.…
Hoyos on Universities Need To Be Made To Lose PrestigeJuly 28, 2025
“Losing to win”, doesn’t work, not really. Look at the UK, they scuttled the conservatives, vile as they’ve become, assuming…
yesitdid on Jung’s Synchronicity & CoincidenceJuly 27, 2025
Doctor Briggs. I suspect Carl Jung might thought a little bit like me. Although I'm not normally psychotic, my brain…