Posted inCulture
In Defense of World Cup Enjoyment: A Response to Dalrymple
The much loved, and surely respected, Theodore Dalrymple does not like soccer. He says of soccer fans, "Try as I might to expunge the thought from my mind that this…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
In Defense of Dogmatism
In so far as I have a coherent philosophy of statistics, I hope it is "robust" enough to cope in principle with the whole of statistics, and sufficiently undogmatic not…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Tricky Probability Problem: Chance of Two Sons, One Born on Tuesday?
Thanks to reader Matt Lewis who sent me this link. Martin Gardner, may he rest in peace, gave us a delicious probability problem: Suppose that Mrs Smith has two children,…
No Replay In Soccer: Sepp Blatter, Hold Strong!
Hold the line, Sepp. Don't buckle under the pressure, which now is intense and hot, but soon will be slack and not even tepid. We do not need to let…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Statistics as Beauty; Global Warming Miscellany; SATs Biased?; More
Statistics is Beautiful? From reader Yeah, Yeah comes a link to a Wired article which assures us we should "Learn the Language of Data." It's not a pretty language, but…
More Bad Music; Class Wrap-Up; Go USA
Way Behind Back Thanks to everybody who stuck through the lectures, such as they were, for the last two weeks. I wrote these "lessons" over about a twenty-minute period each…
Posted inStatistics
Last Class
It was the Nines last night. Pizza, beer, and wine, followed by sketchy music. A definite conceit of statistics is its habit of declaring with something-approaching-certainty that this or that…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Do You Really Want: Part II
Class is, thank God, rapidly coming to an end. I am sure we are all grateful. Here's an addendum to yesterday; but only briefly explained. Because of the crush of…
