Statistics – Page 193 – William M. Briggs

What Is And What We Know Of It, Probabilistically Speaking

Ontology is the study of what is and what is not. Epistemology is the study of our knowledge of what is and what is not. Though there are obvious points…

Statistics

Is It Okay To Force A Baker To Sell Cakes In Violation Of His Religious Conscience?

Here's the setup: a Colorado judge has ordered a Christian man and owner of a bakery that he must bake cakes for homosexual civil ceremonies (homosexual "marriage" is illegal in…

Statistics

The Top Five Mistakes In Marketing Statistics

Forgive me the title, won't you? It is my own creation, I admit, but numbered promises are eminently clickable. Plus they are the norm in business writing. Anyway, the real…

Culture Statistics

Scientism, Legalism and Precaution: Regulating Nutrition and Health Claims in Europe

Announcing a new paper, with official title "Scientism, Legalism and Precaution -- Contending with Regulating Nutrition and Health Claims in Europe" in European Food and Feed Law Review by Jaap…

Statistics

Twenty Tips For Interpreting Scientific Claims

Title of today's post is taken from article of the same name in Nature by William Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter, Mark Burgman. Several readers asked me to comment. I'll assume you've…

Culture Philosophy Statistics

Friedrich A. Hayek’s Lecture “The Pretense of Knowledge”

This was reprinted in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. I've chopped it into parts for commenting. To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the…

Philosophy Statistics

What Random Means In Random Number Generation

Thinking about one-time pads reminded me to point this out. It's simple, really. A "random" number generator spits out a string of numbers or characters from some set, say c1,…

Statistics

A Survey Of The Perceptions Of Climate Scientists 2013: No Consensus

Earlier this year scientists were given a survey on their opinion of the state of climate science. This was administered by Dennis Bray & Hans von Storch at the Helmholtz…

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…
Paul murphy on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 16, 2025
Ok, maybe I need more coffee but I found that very confusing - too much I think that you think…
JH on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 16, 2025
The mathematical result from the Di Finetti's 0-1 Representation Theorem discussed here tells us, under the assumption of exchangeability (which…
spudjr60 on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 16, 2025
Well, it is a good thing, that I know beyond any doubt that all conspiracy theories are false. And, I…
hudbwu on Over-Certainty Of Polygenic ScoresJune 11, 2025
I stopped midway to write this comment. What exactly is the difference between polygenic scores and two-layer neural networks? Other…