Accept these silly GIFs in lieu of a post. I'd've had something meatier, but events overtook. First, I spent two days fixing code that was, after all, giving me the…
There is a hierarchy of models in the sense they offer insight into the thing modeled. The order of importance is: causal, deterministic, probabilistic, statistical. Most models use mixtures of…
There is a belief---a persistent and beguiling, yet false belief---that a formula exists that can predict anything. This formula will differ, it is thought, by the thing predicted, and it…
Today's post is at The Stream: The Murder Rate has Plunged Since 1990...But Big Gov Knows How to Turn That Around. Go there for the narration and data explanation. Here's…
Equality kills everything it touches, eventually. So much is well known. It is also realized by regular readers that requiring academics to publish or perish causes them to perish intellectually.…
Steve Goldberg was president of the sociology department at City College of New York (CCNY) from 1988 until his retirement (back when they knew how to do sociology). He is…
Today's post (more a news report) is at The Stream: Government Lab Has Been Faking Data for Years. A person or persons at the same US Geological Survey Lab in…