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 inFun Statistics
The Predictive Skills of Octopii: Paul’s World Cup Prognostications
In Detroit, for that glorious game of soccer-on-ice-with-sticks, we---I still say "we"; you can never separate yourself from your birthplace---know what to do with octopuses, octopii as were: We toss…
Posted inStatistics
Lady Wins Fourth Lottery: What Are the Odds?
I'm in the wild blue yonder today; so here is a distraction. Thanks to reader Jade for suggesting the topic. Nobody can scratch better than Las Vegas resident Joan Ginther,…
Posted inStatistics
Consensus Members Agree To Agree: Breaking Story
The agreement amongst climatologists who agree that mankind will cause devastating climate change is popularly known as "The Consensus." Those who agree with the consensus are part of the consensus;…
Posted inFun Statistics
World Cup Statistics and Predictions for the Final
A prediction (made on Monday, 28 June) verified: Although---and this has nothing to do with the issue at hand---Argentina's goaltender Sergio Romero stinks, and that's putting it nicely. Every shot…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
In Defense of Dogmatism
In so far as I have a coherent philosophy of statistics, I hope it is "robust" enough to cope in principle with the whole of statistics, and sufficiently undogmatic not…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Statistics as Beauty; Global Warming Miscellany; SATs Biased?; More
Statistics is Beautiful? From reader Yeah, Yeah comes a link to a Wired article which assures us we should "Learn the Language of Data." It's not a pretty language, but…
More Bad Music; Class Wrap-Up; Go USA
Way Behind Back Thanks to everybody who stuck through the lectures, such as they were, for the last two weeks. I wrote these "lessons" over about a twenty-minute period each…