First basics of models and the Deadly Sin. Also the superiority of relevance over the misleading idea of independence. WARNING for those reading the email version! The text below might…

How impressive does this headline sound: "Forecaster who's predicted every presidential winner correctly for 40 YEARS reveals who he thinks will win 2024 election"? We'll use this to look at…

Here is how the political magazine Nature opened its article "25 million deaths: what could happen if the US ends global health funding: Models estimate the ginormous potential impact of…

Ladies and gentlemen---and you, too, Hagfish---I present to you Science! In the form of the picture that heads today's post. This delightful children's drawing, presumably winning the Special Needs Science…

Suppose you're an Expert, or even an ordinary person, and you say, "If the world is like X, then Y will happen". Or you say or imply, "If the world…

There is this idea in statistics called the "bootstrap." The idea is not crazy, but it's not quite right either. Works like this: data comes in, and usually some parameterized…

I have loathed Tim Walz since the covid panic. He embraced hersterical models, and used the excuse they were The Science to grab power. Briefly, in May 2020, as you'll…

I'm stealing this from Spectator, which has done science right. It shows the UK's SAGE Expert models for covid. In each case, the gray and others colors are the model…