Posted inStatistics
How to Fool Yourself—And Others—With Statistics
See the news box to the left. I wrote this long ago and never used it. I do not love it. But since I am so busy, I haven't the…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Do You Really Want: Part II
Class is, thank God, rapidly coming to an end. I am sure we are all grateful. Here's an addendum to yesterday; but only briefly explained. Because of the crush of…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Lesson n+1: Measurement & Observables
Just a very crude sketch today: it is not complete by any stretch. Naturally, the students in the summer class don't receive this level of information. Best we can tell,…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Lesson Somethingorother: Against the P-value
I've lost count of the lesson numbers. The definition of a p-value, here phrased in the incorrectly named "test of difference in means", is: Given the truth of a probability…
Posted inStatistics
Lesson Zero: Lecturing, Churchill, and End of the World
Teaching as Performance The class is two weeks of solid statistics. Eight hours a day weeks; save the weekends. I don't know about other instructors, but my technique is to…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Confidence Intervals, Logic, Induction
Induction "Because all the many flames observed before have been hot is a good reason to believe this flame will be hot" is an example of an inductive argument, and…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
The Truth of Things: When Probability & Statistics Cannot Be Used
I am always struggling with (my limited ability of) finding ways to describe the philosophy behind logical probability, especially to people who have a difficult time unlearning classical frequentist theory.…
Posted inStatistics
My Answers to Willis Eschenbach’s 14 + 2 Questions
Repost Mr Eschenbach had not had the chance to respond to this article before the two weeks wherein comments are automatically closed have elapsed. This re-post will allow him, and…