Posted inStatistics
There Is No Such Thing As A 1000-Year Flood
Phrases like "100 year rainfalls" or floods or whatever for whatever period of time are awful. They convey an improper idea of uncertainty. The phrase "X year event" is based…
Posted inStatistics
Why Statistics Can’t Discover Cause, And Bad Priors
My mailbag is filling up. Today two questions from readers, both about statistics. Feel free to send yours in on any subject. Tomorrow is a doozy. Question 1 From reader…
Posted inPhilosophy SAMT
Summary Against Modern Thought: Arguments Against The World Being Eternal
See the first post in this series for an explanation and guide of our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles. All posts are under the category SAMT. Previous post. We had…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Probability’s Empirical Bias
Bit of logic (a favorite example) from our teacher Lewis Carroll: given "All cats understand French and that some chickens are cats", what can we say about the proposition "Some…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Paper Finds Pattern In Primes: What About Randomness & Chance?
Here's the headline in Nature: "Peculiar pattern found in 'random' prime numbers", an article which opens "Two mathematicians have found a strange pattern in prime numbers -- showing that the…
Posted inFun Statistics
Hear Briggs Speak Free on Why You’re Doing Statistics Wrong
Hear Briggs Speak Free! Where by "Free" I mean you pay my expenses. Here are the details. Hear the One And Only William M. Briggs The Statisticians to the Stars!…
Posted inPodcast
Lucky You! All About Luck — WMBriggs Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEz3x8J21Ns Robert Goulet: Time After Time So there's this guy, "J"---and this is a true story, so pay attention. J's doing well, a pillar of his community. Big family, house,…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
A Probability Non-Paradox
Before you is a box in which is a slip of paper on which is written either '0', '1', '2', or '3'. Given that premise, what is the probability of…
