Statistics – Page 195 – William M. Briggs

New Paper: Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’

Well, not that new after all, seeing that the peer-reviewed "Climate Consensus and 'Misinformation': A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change" by David…

Statistics

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…

JH on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
The alternative to preserved clay is, sooner rather than later, mouldy clay… Does this mean to create fear? There are…
Cary Cotterman on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
Growing up in the late 1950s, I played with modeling clay almost every day. Who knows, back then it was…
Phil R on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
I'm no expert but I think it's a little over the top comparing PFAS with Agent Orange. PFAS, for the…
Tars Tarkas on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
None of this should change the fact that chemical companies like 3M actively covered up the PFAS problem in the…
Ray on Politicians Demand “Right” To Be Protected Against AISeptember 16, 2026
As far as I can tell, AI is nothing but a computer with a big data base and some fancy…