2014 – Page 38 – William M. Briggs

Probability Is Logic: Philosophy of Probability & Statistics Video Series

I'm starting---and even continuing, if there is interest---a new video series on the philosophy of probability and statistics. Look at those retro production values! I boast of them following Julia…

Culture Philosophy Statistics

On Intelligence & Religiosity

Take a pencil and paper---do this---and write down the most intelligent people who have ever lived. Most brilliant in any field of endeavor, now. Who were the best of us?…

Culture Statistics

Researchers Invent Exciting New Disease: Poverty Blindness

There must soon come a day at The Onion, the satirical newspaper, when the editors will gather in bewilderment and say to each other, "Fellas, there's no use. The real…

Statistics

Scientists Discover Men Enjoy Looking At Women’s Breasts.

Regular readers will recall there are two main kinds of bad statistics. First is when the technique has been done wrong or is misapplied. Errors of this kind comprise only…

Philosophy Statistics

What Statistics Really Is: Part II

Read Part I, Part Paradox I claimed, and it is true, that all statistical problems could be written $latex \Pr(p|q)$, where p is a proposition of interest and q is…

Philosophy Statistics

What Statistics Really Is: Paradox Digression

Read Part I We're taking a small digression to answer a question put by Deborah Mayo in Part I, pointing to this article on her site. Mayo should be on…

Philosophy Statistics

What Statistics Really Is: Part I

It's so simple that you'll think I'm kidding. Worse, the way I'll show it is such a radical departure from the manner in which you're used to thinking about probability…

Culture Fun

Huffington Post Gives Helpful ‘To Do’ List To Pope Francis

I didn't finish the 'What Statistics Really Is' post so you have to settle for this. After (I imagine) completing a rock-solid thirty minutes of intense theological studies and drawing…

hudbwu on Over-Certainty Of Polygenic ScoresJune 11, 2025
I stopped midway to write this comment. What exactly is the difference between polygenic scores and two-layer neural networks? Other…
NLR on AI & The Dilemma Of TechnologyJune 11, 2025
It's not just that the effects of technology are complex, it's that there's no guarantee that the results will fit…
Cloudbuster on AI & The Dilemma Of TechnologyJune 10, 2025
"Anyway, murder is illegal, too, yet murder is still with us. So it shouldn’t be strange that forbidding scientists to…
Mike Wooly on Cosmic Radiation, Clouds, & Global WarmingJune 10, 2025
The IPCC report that anthropogenic warming is around 0.2 degrees C per decade. That's two hundredths of a degree C…
Chaeremon on AI & The Dilemma Of TechnologyJune 10, 2025
IMHO the dot ai bubble, as direct follower of the dot com bubble, is trying to instantiate Gödel's incompleteness theorems,…