Posted inPhilosophy
Wired’s theory: the end of theory
Chris Anderson, over at Wired magazine, has written an article called The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete. Anderson, whose thesis is that we no…
IMS: Citation Indexes Stink
The Institute of Mathematical Statistics (I am a member) has issued a report on the wide-spread misuse of Citation Statistics. The full report may be found here. The non-surprising main…
Posted inPhilosophy
Variant on a theme
We, dear readers, have earlier dealt with the nonsensical argument, of which an Enlightened few are excessively fond, "There is no truth." This is an argument often employed by those…
Posted inFun
Ithaca update: hours and dogs as presidential candidates
The Ithaca Hours, mentioned in the previous post, quantify a barter system, trading "hours worked" at one task for equivalent "hours worked" at another. For example, you might trade one…
Posted inStatistics
But you must hate us!
I am in Ithaca, New York, teaching a short course at Cornell University. Have you ever visited Ithaca? It was once voted the "most enlightened city in America" by the…
Posted inFun
Please don’t let them do it
You will have by now heard that some are advocating the use of "instant replay" in baseball. The, for lack of a better word, entities pushing for this realize its…
Posted inFun
Peer-reviewed research: Men find looking at nearly naked women distracting
Nothing is true unless it has been demonstrated and published in a peer-reviewed journal. For example, until last week, many people suspected that when men look at nearly or completely…
Bill Clinton’s “Pump Head”
I have never, and will never, read Vanity Fair. Given our culture is already saturated, more mindless celebrity tittle tattle written by besotted suck-ups I do not need. So I…
