Posted inCulture Statistics
On Witch Hunts
Help me, here. We need a new term. Witch hunt has an entirely negative connotation, and this should not be. Genuine witches should be hunted, as doubtless all agree. Witches,…
Posted inStatistics
Road Rage: Paper Says Living Near Road Causes Dementia
Dust is thrilling researchers these days. Dust, or the more scientific sounding PM2.5, is the next greatest struggle after global warming. We've already seen attempts to prove dust, as measured…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Proof Cause Is In The Mind And Not In The Data
Pick something that happened. Doesn't matter what it is, as long as it happened. Something caused this thing to happen; which is to say, something actual turned the potential (of…
Posted inStatistics
Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Outside, It’s Gaia 2.0!
James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, via Wikipedia, is that "living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and…
Posted inClass Statistics
How To Do Predictive Statistics: Part IX Stan — Logistic & Beta Regression
Review! We're doing logistic and beta regression this time. These aren't far apart, because the observable for both lives between 0 and 1; for logistic it is 0 or 1;…
Posted inStatistics
Poor Richard Carrier Goes On The Offensive
Six years ago I wrote a small, daily piece (Bayes Theorem Proves Jesus Existed And Didn't Exist) about the use of probability in proving or disproving the existence of God.…
Posted inStatistics
Cornell Professor Exposes His Wee P-values One Too Many Times: All P-values Are P-Hacking
The over-production of wee p-values led to the downfall of Cornell Professor Brian Wansink, who is being made to retire (with what we can guess is a comfortable "package"). We…
Posted inStatistics
The Getting Of Bastards
'We have kept back the pudding for you, sir,' said Mowett, 'and meanwhile Mr Butcher has been asking us riddles, some of them most amazingly clever. The present one, that…