Statistics – Page 228 – William M. Briggs

Unsignificant Statistics: Or Die P-Value, Die Die Die

Must...resist...quoting... from Stephen Ziliak's gorgeous invective "Unsignificant Statistics" (where I stole today's title) in the Financial Post. Well, just a little (all emphasis mine and joyfully placed): Statistical significance is…

Philosophy Statistics

Scientists Discover Way To Increase Publication Count

Anybody who has spent any time in a university library amidst the papers of his specialty knows that the absolute last thing which is needed is more of them. Journals…

Statistics

Krauthammer’s Wrong: NSA Spying Not Equivalent To Policing

Charles Krauthammer ought to be taken seriously. He said yesterday from his daily perch that he wasn't concerned about NSA spying on Americans because there hasn't been any or many…

Culture Statistics

You Do Too Have Something To Hide

"Let them look at my phone records. I have nothing to hide. They can read all my emails. There's nothing there worth reading." We hear this primarily from the young,…

Statistics

Data Mining, PRISM, NSA & False Positives: Update

Remember how---this is a really brief history lesson--remember how the NSA, CIA, FBI, and many other of those lettered agencies with their ever-increasing budgets, super-sophisticated computers, genius brain mathematicians, statisticians,…

Philosophy Statistics

What Should Philosophers Of Statistics Do?

A while back, far longer than it should have been, D.G. Mayo asked me to stop by her place and comment on a couple of posts. But laziness and excessive…

Philosophy Statistics

Never Say “Caused By Chance”

One of the services of this blog is grammatical guidance. In that spirit, here are phrases which should be forbidden, and will be once I am in charge (all highlights…

Statistics

The Consensus On Global Cooling

It is an interesting exercise to read press reports of the Consensus. The Consensus as was, not as is. The Consensus as of 1975, when the sky was literally going…

John Pate on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 30, 2026
I would press the red button because it's the red button. The bigger the red button the harder you hit…
Polybius II on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
"their Other Lives’ Value premise is something vague about man, but not men" I am reminded of a british comedian…
Johnno on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
But do we get time to explain to everyone and have them all sit down and have a discussion before…
gareth on Class 87: Calibration & Conformal Prediction: ExamplesApril 29, 2026
Timestamp 21:35: A "correction" from 0.8 to 1.0 is a "correction factor" of 1.25, not 0.2 (akshully wot you mean…
Cato on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
There’s no point to a world without me; of course I press Red.