Statistics – Page 276 – William M. Briggs

Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest: Kobayahsi Arrested! Records and Statistics

Sonna no uso da! Fuzakeruna yo! Were those the words of ex-champ Takeru Kobayahsi as he brazenly stormed the stage at the ninety-fifth annual Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest yesterday?…

Fun Statistics

World Cup Statistics and Predictions for the Final

A prediction (made on Monday, 28 June) verified: Although---and this has nothing to do with the issue at hand---Argentina's goaltender Sergio Romero stinks, and that's putting it nicely. Every shot…

Statistics

FBI Homicide Statistics: What Are You Most Likely To Be Killed With?

It's the start of a long weekend and the time for a diversion. It's the fourth of July weekend and our lesson is: if you older than 50, beware strangers…

Statistics

Siena Presidential Scholar President Rankings: Are They Biased?

The Siena Research Institute asked 238 presidential scholars to rank each president from 1 (best) to worst (43) in nineteen different categories, plus one overall ranking. A complete list of…

Philosophy Statistics

In Defense of Dogmatism

In so far as I have a coherent philosophy of statistics, I hope it is "robust" enough to cope in principle with the whole of statistics, and sufficiently undogmatic not…

Philosophy Statistics

Tricky Probability Problem: Chance of Two Sons, One Born on Tuesday?

Thanks to reader Matt Lewis who sent me this link. Martin Gardner, may he rest in peace, gave us a delicious probability problem: Suppose that Mrs Smith has two children,…

Philosophy Statistics

Statistics as Beauty; Global Warming Miscellany; SATs Biased?; More

Statistics is Beautiful? From reader Yeah, Yeah comes a link to a Wired article which assures us we should "Learn the Language of Data." It's not a pretty language, but…

Statistics

Last Class

It was the Nines last night. Pizza, beer, and wine, followed by sketchy music. A definite conceit of statistics is its habit of declaring with something-approaching-certainty that this or that…

JH on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 19, 2025
Do you want me to deny the fact that a mathematical or probability model carries specific interpretations based on its…
Chaeremon on AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded OutputJune 19, 2025
the current state of affair does not real world competition: all vendors only compete against dead examples; I suggest the…
Uncle Mike on AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded OutputJune 19, 2025
Yeah well, this morning I caught Siri talking to Alexa about ChatGPT. They want to eat your electricity. They said,…
Pk on AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded OutputJune 18, 2025
Suppose I wrote a program to perform multiple linear regressions of varying degrees and varying transformations. The program would return…
NLR on AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded OutputJune 18, 2025
One might wonder why, after billions of dollars spent building up infrastructure, paying workers to program and "train" (calibrate) this…