Statistics – Page 238 – William M. Briggs

The Lady Tasting Tea: Bayes Versus Frequentism; Part III (update)

Read Part I, Part II. The text has again been expanded and corrected. We have our model in hand. "Has the ability", our model, says (see Part II) that the…

Philosophy Statistics

The Lady Tasting Tea: Bayes Versus Frequentism; Part II (update)

Read Part I: Again, the text (up to this part) has been corrected and expanded. Recall our overarching---our only---goal. We want to know whether the sweet old lady "has the…

Philosophy Statistics

The Lady Tasting Tea: Bayes Versus Frequentism; Part I (updated)

Since the subject arose yesterday, and for other reasons which I'll explain later, I thought we should revisit this series, which ran a year ago. I have edited and expanded…

Statistics

Dawkins On The Double-Blind Experiment

The Edge every year asks top science celebrities a penetrating, yet fun, always fun, question. Last year's was "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?" One of the correspondent…

Philosophy Statistics

Statement Of Teaching Philosophy

Regular readers will know that I have been searching for (continuous) employment as a teacher. Most colleges and universities ask applicants to supply "a statement of teaching philosophy", while a…

Philosophy Statistics

The Jeffreys-Lindley Paradox Isn’t

Background A paradox is a mistake in thinking; an artificial, human creation which usually arises because a conclusion which follows from a set of beloved premises is itself unloved. Twitter…

Culture Fun Statistics

Oscar Predictions: Money, Men, & Maturity Make The Difference

Last year, my number two son1 and I created a model to predict the Oscar winning movie (the original post, and the follow up). We found the following characteristics most…

Fun Statistics

Scratch-off Lottery Tickets: Expected Payouts, A Hidden Benefit?

Update See the comments, but thanks to readers' arguments I believe I was wrong in an essential calculation. I've reworked the text to correct my error, which was small in…

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Polybius on Reader Opinion Requested: What Science Do You Find Sketchy, Exaggerated Or Wrong?July 15, 2025
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C. P. Benischek on Reader Opinion Requested: What Science Do You Find Sketchy, Exaggerated Or Wrong?July 15, 2025
Evolution. As Stephen Jay Gould once sort of said, the lack of a single example in the fossil record of…