Posted inCulture Philosophy Statistics
On Intelligence & Religiosity
Take a pencil and paper---do this---and write down the most intelligent people who have ever lived. Most brilliant in any field of endeavor, now. Who were the best of us?…
Posted inCulture Statistics
Researchers Invent Exciting New Disease: Poverty Blindness
There must soon come a day at The Onion, the satirical newspaper, when the editors will gather in bewilderment and say to each other, "Fellas, there's no use. The real…
Posted inStatistics
Scientists Discover Men Enjoy Looking At Women’s Breasts.
Regular readers will recall there are two main kinds of bad statistics. First is when the technique has been done wrong or is misapplied. Errors of this kind comprise only…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Statistics Really Is: Part II
Read Part I, Part Paradox I claimed, and it is true, that all statistical problems could be written $latex \Pr(p|q)$, where p is a proposition of interest and q is…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Statistics Really Is: Paradox Digression
Read Part I We're taking a small digression to answer a question put by Deborah Mayo in Part I, pointing to this article on her site. Mayo should be on…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Statistics Really Is: Part I
It's so simple that you'll think I'm kidding. Worse, the way I'll show it is such a radical departure from the manner in which you're used to thinking about probability…
Posted inStatistics
Statistics Talk: Chances Are You’re Doing It Wrong
The problem with statistics is the astonishing amount of magical thinking tolerated. A statistician---or his apprentice; this means you---waving a formula over a dataset is little different than an alchemist…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement? Hypothesis Tests
Edge asked a whopping number of named persons which ideas are ready to be expunged from the thing that is Science. Somehow my invitation got lost in the aether, an…