Posted inStatistics
What Can Volcanic Dust Models Tell Us About Cap & Trade?
Say Eyjafjallajokull three times fast. I wish I could say it once. I've heard it in so many different forms since it blew its stack that I can't be sure…
Posted inStatistics
The Pournelle vs. Nolan Chart: Political Throwdown
Before Jerry Pournelle began writing science fiction; before, that is, he teamed with Larry Niven to write the classic Lucifer's Hammer1, he was a political scientist. Pournelle was dissatisfied with…
Posted inStatistics
Russia Subtracted Most People; India Added Most.
It's Friday and time for something light. In 2006, Russia lost 732,000 people. Don't bother searching for them, because most of them were never born. Its neighbor Ukraine also misplaced…
Posted inStatistics
Pajamas Media: The Dismal Economics of Utopia
Today's post is at Pajamas Media: The Dismal Economics of Utopia. This is first is a short series. I thought it would be fun to show how the utopian ideas…
Posted inStatistics
Obama: “Thank me!”
Obamacare. Thank you, sir! May I have another! $800 billion "stimulus" spending. Thank you, sir! May I have another! Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; Wise Latinas on the bench; SCHIP…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Randomness is a Matter of Information
How many pads of paper do I have on my desk right now? How many books are on my shelves this minute? You don't know the answer to any of…
Posted inStatistics
Calculating the Uncertainty of Economic and Other Forecasts
I was asked to talk about how to handle uncertainty in forecasts. Below is a rough sketch. Many of you run or work with models that produce forecasts, guesses of…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Peer Review and Proof
Suppose that I today, below, in this post, prove to you a certain mathematics theorem, say, "The Symmetry of Individual Constants." Is that theorem true? Before you answer, consider that…