January 2010 – William M. Briggs

Tim Tebow’s Super Bowl Ad and the Washington Post Editorial

Very delicate ground, here. I want to be as precise as I know how in discussing the language used in today's Washington Post editorial about the upcoming Tim Tebow ad,…

Culture Statistics

Welcome-to-Saturday Links

My heart soared like a hawk this week after several readers sent in fascinating stories. Here are a few of them. Reader Sara C sent in a wonderful example of…

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R Lecture 4: Help & Plotting

This is the fourth in a series of lectures on R. 10 minutes is a shockingly short period of time! Today, we learn the R way to create comments: start…

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R Lecture 3: Our First Program!

This is the third in a series of lectures on R. (DAV, I kept the intro for one last time.) Open the myRcode.R file we saved in our myR folder.…

Culture

Two-and-a-Half Millennia Don’t Change Much

Herodotus begins his history by telling us that some Phoenician traders came to Argos, Greece and, on a whim, abducted the king's daughter Io and took her to Egypt. Later,…

Statistics

Create Tax Refunds That Must Be Donated To Political Parties?

In the State of the Union address, President Obama thought it would be pleasant to slam the Supreme Court, shaming them for their recent Citizens United v. FEC decision. Our…

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R Lecture 2: Prepping a Folder

Main page for R Lectures. This is the second in a series of lectures on R. R is command-line software. We need to type in commands. These commands should be…

Culture

State of the Union Snippets: Live Blog (update continuously)

Started by intimating: It's bad now, but when it was bad before, it got good. "Answer history's call." "These struggles are why I ran for President." Thought: It's tough to…

Williis Eschenbach on Why Study Probability?November 16, 2025
John, I asked a THEORETICAL question. Pointing out that there are real-world options is MEANINGLESS to my question. How about…
John Pate on Why Study Probability?November 16, 2025
Eschenbach, card counting was arrived at by an empirically derived process. That's not the same as having bogus statistical theories…
hudbwu on Academics Debate Which Term Best Describes Those Who Love (in that way) Their PillowsNovember 16, 2025
I like how it's implied nuking from orbit is a lesser strike than defunding. :)
Williis Eschenbach on Why Study Probability?November 16, 2025
John, you say: "Try a different Aunt Sally, Eschenbach: an actual physical dice is an object that can be examined…
John Pate on The Dysgenics Of IVFNovember 15, 2025
The technocrats are unconcerned: they claim they can fix it all via gene editing, or maybe embryo selection, but anyway…