August 2014 – Page 3 – William M. Briggs

It Makes No Sense To Say You’re More Likely To Die Of Bee Sting Than Shark Bite

The National Journal says: "The odds of being killed by a shark are about 1 in 3.7 million. The odds of being killed by a sting from a bee, wasp,…

Statistics

Decline Of Participation In Religious Rituals With Improved Sanitation

Answer me this. Earl at the end of the bar, on his sixth or seventh, tells listeners just what's wrong with America's science policy. His words receive knowing nods from…

Philosophy Statistics

Comments On Dawid’s Prequential Probability

Phil Dawid is a brilliant mathematical statistician who introduced (in 1984) the theory of prequential probability1 to describe a new-ish way of doing statistics. We ought to understand this theory.…

Philosophy Statistics

Explanation Vs Prediction

Introduction There isn't as much space between explanation and prediction as you'd think; both are had from the same elements of the problem at hand. Here's how it all works.…

Philosophy

Philosophic Issues in Cosmology V: What Measurements Tell Us—Guest Post by Bob Kurland

Bob Kurland is a retired, cranky, old physicist, and convert to Catholicism. He shows that there is no contradiction between what science tells us about the world and our Catholic…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: God Has No Passive Potentiality

See the first post in this series for an explanation and guide of our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles. All posts are under the category SAMT. Previous post. We started…

Culture Philosophy

Gibbon (And O’Brian) On Too Many Lawyers

This is Gibbon, quoted in Patrick O'Brian's The Reverse of the Medal by the character Dr Stephen Maturin, who then speaks: '"It is dangerous to entrust the conduct of nations…

Statistics

Missing Global Warming Close To A Solution?

I can't tell you where I obtained a photocopy of the note below. I can tell you that I am in Washington DC (at the lovely and recommended Morrison Clark…

Briggs on Eggs and ‘PFAS-Easter’ or Selling Fear on the Day of Resurrection — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampMay 13, 2025
Hagfish, I still remember my grandpa putting a tiny saccharin tablet into his coffee.
spetzer86 on Eggs and ‘PFAS-Easter’ or Selling Fear on the Day of Resurrection — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampMay 13, 2025
I ultimate end-point is that we all die. Some sooner, some later. You can be healthy as a horse one…
Hagfish Bagpipe on Eggs and ‘PFAS-Easter’ or Selling Fear on the Day of Resurrection — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampMay 13, 2025
Reminds me of the cyclamate and saccharin scares of the 60s-70s. Media hyping bladder tumors in lab rats supposedly caused…
dumbest.ox on Academics Call Pregnancy A DiseaseMay 12, 2025
President Carter had the federal rules changed to reclassify normal pregnancy / birth, as illness / disease, in order to…
spetzer86 on Academics Call Pregnancy A DiseaseMay 12, 2025
I'm thinking glasses wouldn't help given that the act is usually done in close proximity and in the dark. Even…