Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Causation And Correlation
Our friend Christopher Monckton of Brenchley wrote a piece over at Anthony Watt's place in which he said (Reader KA Rodgers asked me to have a look): CO2 concentration continues…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Is And What We Know Of It, Probabilistically Speaking
Ontology is the study of what is and what is not. Epistemology is the study of our knowledge of what is and what is not. Though there are obvious points…
Posted inCulture Philosophy
Could A Virgin Birth Ever Really Happen?
In an article Salon mistitled "About that 'immaculate' conception"1---the immaculate conception speaks of St Mary's entry into the world, not Jesus's---Daniel Engber, a developmental neuroscientist at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, gives us…
Posted inStatistics
Twenty Tips For Interpreting Scientific Claims
Title of today's post is taken from article of the same name in Nature by William Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter, Mark Burgman. Several readers asked me to comment. I'll assume you've…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Random Means In Random Number Generation
Thinking about one-time pads reminded me to point this out. It's simple, really. A "random" number generator spits out a string of numbers or characters from some set, say c1,…
Posted inStatistics
A Survey Of The Perceptions Of Climate Scientists 2013: No Consensus
Earlier this year scientists were given a survey on their opinion of the state of climate science. This was administered by Dennis Bray & Hans von Storch at the Helmholtz…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Observational Versus Controlled Trials
Received this email from a reader: I took on board all I read on your website, and it has created confusion in my mind. I have been reading Ioannidis and…
Posted inStatistics
We’re 88% Through The International Year Of Statistics
I hadn't any idea we'd even started. But thanks to reader Dan Hughes and his link to the Wall Street Journal story Odds Lot: Statisticians Party Like It's 2.013 x…