Statistics – Page 200 – William M. Briggs

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…

Philosophy 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.…

Book review Philosophy Statistics

An Introduction To Uncertainty: Probability, Statistics, and Modeling of All Kinds

This is a teaser, the first part of a 3,200-word narrative outline for the book that I've started to shop around. The current title is in the headline. Regular readers…

Statistics

Sex With 21 (Not 20) Women Lowers Risk Of Prostate Cancer. It’s Science!

Today's headline was modified from the Telegraph, one of the least lurid and sensationalistic of those generated by the peer-reviewed paper "Sexual partners, sexually transmitted infections, and prostate cancer risk"…

Philosophy Statistics

On Nate Silver’s Predictions: Which Side Of The Probability Equation Are We On?

When I checked FiveThirtyEight.com's Senate prediction, it said "Republicans have a 72.3% chance of winning a majority." There were also words that the "probability that each party will win control…

Culture Statistics

Update On Gun Crime: Downward Bound. Vote Accordingly

Elections are nearing and some of our friends are worried about guns. Measures are on ballots, votes are urged; that sort of thing. Nerves are raw, tempers are flared. Now…

Statistics

Doc Asks Fellows To Keep Statistics Simple

Our friend Christos Argyropoulos (â€@ChristosArgyrop) to a popular medical site in which Stephen Reznick asks "Keep statistics simple for primary care doctors." He can't read the journals, because why? Because…

Philosophy Statistics

The Mysticism Of Simulations: Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Sampling, And Their Alternatives

Introit Ever heard of somebody "simulating" normal "random" or "stochastic" variables, or perhaps "drawing" from a normal or some other distribution? Such things form the backbone of many statistical methods,…

C-Marie on You Can’t Con An Honest Man & The Case of Jason ArdayAugust 10, 2026
The need for Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, Who is the Truth, Who is the Life, and Who is…
N.S. Palmer on You Can’t Con An Honest Man & The Case of Jason ArdayAugust 10, 2026
The Academic Fallacy is what I called "the Existentialist Fallacy:" "Certain errors creep into most debates about social policy and…
Cary Cotterman on You Can’t Con An Honest Man & The Case of Jason ArdayAugust 10, 2026
I never heard of this Arday buffoon until a couple of weeks ago. As I read through the account of…
Brian (bulaoren) on You Can’t Con An Honest Man & The Case of Jason ArdayAugust 10, 2026
@ Uncle Mike Your comment reminds me that I really miss William F Buckley. He was often accused of dredging…
Uncle Mike on You Can’t Con An Honest Man & The Case of Jason ArdayAugust 10, 2026
Five stars for the use of "rhodomontade"! I suspect nobody on the faculty at Cambridge knows the word, because they…