Posted inCulture
July 4th: It’s Summer And It’s Hot
[To be sung to the obvious tune] I have a sad story to tell you It might upset you a bit Last night I walked on the sidewalk And it…
Posted inStatistics
Statistics Mailbag
Because of my new gig and then my two-week sojourn at Cornell I am way behind in acknowledging all the emails and blog tips I have received. Nearly all stories…
Posted inStatistics
Why Do Statisticians Answer Silly Questions That No One Ever Asks?
Julian Champkin, editor of Significance magazine somehow came across the percipient insights of yours truly and asked me to write l'article controversé. Which I did. And with gusto. Champkin, a…
Posted inFun Statistics
Are The Masters Winners Getting Younger And Better? Predictions Update
Update As of this writing, the 2012 Masters is halfway through, so it's a good time to re-examine the predictions made last April for this year's tournament. Scores have been…
Posted inStatistics
Climate Denial And Slavery
A common trope among academic philosophers, academic sociologists and the like---people without training in physics, that is---is to compare skepticism of the most shocking climate prognostications with belief in, and…
Posted inStatistics
Heartland Documents Leaked, Massaged, Faked
First thing I did, after hearing that the Heartland Institute's budget was leaked, was to pore through it looking for my name in the hopes of seeing how much moola…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Let’s Try This Time Series Thing Again: Part V
Part I, II, III, IV, V. We started by assuming each X was measured without error, that each observation was perfectly certain. This is not always so for real X.…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Let’s Try This Time Series Thing Again: Part IV
Part I, II, III, IV, V. We have before us X1 to X156. We started by assuming that something, called T, caused these data to take the values it did.…