Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Improper Language About Priors
Suppose you decided (almost surely by some ad hoc rule) that the uncertainty in some thing (call it y) is best quantified by a normal distribution with central parameter θ…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
I Also Declare The Bayesian vs. Frequentist Debate Over For Data Scientists
I stole the title, adding the word "also", from an article by Rafael Irizarry at Simply Stats (tweeted by Diego Kuonen). First, brush clearing. Data scientists. Sounds like galloping bureaucratic…
Posted inStatistics
On The Attribution Of A Single Event To Climate Change
Rained yesterday here in the city of cities. Must be because of climate change, right? Hey. The climate did change and it did rain. What more evidence do you want?…
Posted inStatistics
The Philosophy Of Rock Paper Scissors
Way my dad and I used to play is that when somebody won they got to grab the hand of the loser and then, with the fore- and middle-fingers only,…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Infinite Surprise And Impossible Events
It's a lazy Saturday, so some musings today on entropy and information and probability. It's about time we started tying these things together. Things like the following are heard: "Given…
Posted inBook review Statistics
The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels Reviewed
People first Just in time for the Federally-Recognized-Holiday-Of-25-December-That-Shall-Go-Unnamed we have a suitable gift for science deniers everywhere. Alex Epstein's The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels Science deniers? Yes, sir. Those…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Don’t Use Statistics Unless You Have To
We're finally getting it, as evinced by the responses to the article "Netherlands Temperature Controversy: Or, Yet Again, How Not To Do Time Series." Let's return to the Screaming Willies.…
Posted inStatistics
Nothing Is Distributed: So-Called Random Variables Do Not Follow Distributions
People say "random" variables "behave" in a certain way as if they have a life of their own. To behave is to act, to be caused, to react. This is…