Statistics – Page 297 – William M. Briggs

Consensus Members Agree To Agree: Breaking Story

The agreement amongst climatologists who agree that mankind will cause devastating climate change is popularly known as "The Consensus." Those who agree with the consensus are part of the consensus;…

Fun Statistics

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…

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.
Brian (bulaoren) on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
I think that pessimism morphs into cynicism when we perceive personal gain in our bleak expectations.
Nate on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
The best explanation I saw on twitter was this rephrasing: "There is a blender. Jumping into the blender will kill…
Nate on The Red-Blue Button Dilemma & Its Surprising AnswerApril 29, 2026
I rephrased the question to remove "red" and "blue" priming words and asked the wife: "Space aliens create two buttons,…