Posted inStatistics
Can We Predict The Unpredictable?
The most intriguing thing about the new peer-reviewed paper of the same name as today's post in Nature: Scientific Reports by Abbas Golestani and Robin Gras is that it is…
Posted inStatistics
Climate Change Causing Short Peruvians!
Who remembers those crank scientists who wanted to genetically engineer human beings so that they would be sprier and narrower and thus have smaller "carbon footprints"? We don't need 'em!…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Don’t Use Statistics Unless You Have To
We're finally getting it, as evinced by the responses to the article "Netherlands Temperature Controversy: Or, Yet Again, How Not To Do Time Series." Let's return to the Screaming Willies.…
Posted inStatistics
On That New “Gay Gene” Study
First and most important point: there is no way we're going to cover in 750 words the whole of this field. Much will be left out. This small article is…
Posted inStatistics
Predicting Doom—Guest Post by Thomas Galli
I am not a statistics wizard; an engineer, I value the predictive power of statistics. Indeed, if one can precisely control variables in the design of an experiment, statistics-based prediction…
Posted inStatistics
Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors Of Political Ideology?
The study Another day, another dreary study purporting to show that the brains of "conservatives" are different than those of "liberals." This one hooked up to an electrical phrenology device…
Posted inStatistics
Nothing Is Distributed: So-Called Random Variables Do Not Follow Distributions
People say "random" variables "behave" in a certain way as if they have a life of their own. To behave is to act, to be caused, to react. This is…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
BBC: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? BBC: Because Something
Opens the BBC's campaign: Some physicists think they can explain why the universe first formed. If they are right, our entire cosmos may have sprung out of nothing at all.…