How’d We Do On Our 2019 Predictions?
A strong no prize this year. Nobody did well enough. Not enough specific predictions, or those that were specific did not come to pass. Doom predictions are too easy: they…
Posted inClass Philosophy Statistics
Taleb’s Curious Views On Probability — Part I: I Say Probability Does Not Exist
Ye Olde Statistician points us to an essay (a book chapter?) by our old pal Nassim Nicholas Taleb called "The Logic of Risk Taking". Let's examine it. You, dear reader,…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Randomization Isn’t Needed — And Can Be Harmful
Had a named person in statistics (Andrew Althouse) ask me about randomization, which he likes, and which I do not. "I want to compare outcomes for a specific patient group…
Posted inBook review Philosophy
Inference To An Explanation: Shapiro’s The Miracle Myth Reviewed — Part III
Read Part I, II. Did Jesus walk on water? Eyewitnesses reported he did. The event was so well remarked that people wrote of it at a time when most events…
Posted inClass Statistics
A Beats B Beats C Beats A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=393&v=zzKGnuvX6IQ Thanks to Bruce Foutch who found the video above. Transitivity is familiar with ordinary numbers. If B > A and C > B and D > C, then D…
Posted inClass Statistics
Lovely Example of Statistics Gone Bad
The graph above (biggified version here) was touted by Simon Kuestenmacher (who posts many beautiful maps). He said "This plot shows the objects that were found to be 'the most…
Posted inClass Statistics
Choose Predictive Over Parametric Every Time
Gaze and wonder at picture which heads this article, which I lifted from John Haman's nifty R package ciTools. The numbers in the plot are made up whole cloth to…
Posted inCulture Philosophy Statistics
The Limitations And Usefulness Of IQ
That Smarts Everybody knows that some people are smarter than others, and that some are teachable and some not. Well, some people do deny these facts, believing that if everybody…
