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…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
BBC: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? BBC: Because Something
Opens the BBC's campaign: Some physicists think they can explain why the universe first formed. If they are right, our entire cosmos may have sprung out of nothing at all.…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
The Mysticism Of Simulations: Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Sampling, And Their Alternatives
Introit Ever heard of somebody "simulating" normal "random" or "stochastic" variables, or perhaps "drawing" from a normal or some other distribution? Such things form the backbone of many statistical methods,…
Posted inCulture Statistics
The Preponderance Of Evidence Criterion Is Absurd
Our beneficent government, through its Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights "sent a letter to colleges nationwide on April 4, 2011, mandating policy changes in the way schools handle…