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Continuing puzzlement over "Why" questions
Tyler Cowen links to a blog by Paul Kedrosky that asks why winning times in the Boston marathon have been more variable, in recent years, than winning times in New York. This particular question isn't so interesting--when I saw the...
Great moments in publishing (not)
Recently I was invited to write an article on the philosophy of Bayesian statistics. For a long time I've been unhappy with the discussions of philosophy offered by Bayesian statisticians and also with the perspectives on Bayesian statistics coming from...
Those who don't know statistics are doomed to . . . rely on statistics anyway
To paraphrase Bill James, the alternative to doing statistics is not "not doing statistics," it's "doing bad statistics." Some people bemoan the excessive quantitative nature of academic political science nowadays. I certainly agree that there's room for nonquantitative work, but...
Discomfort motivates joking, or How relevant are historical studies to medical speculation?
In a long review of David Boyd Haycock's "Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer," Steven Shapin discusses historical and recent proposals for extending the human lifespan. Shapin's article seems off to me: he just seems to spend too...
Dennis Lindley's and Christian Robert's reviews of The Black Swan, also an aside about the most important philosophical point of confusion about Bayesian inference
Here's Lindley. I suspect I'd agree with Lindley on just about any issue of statistical theory and practice. I've read some of Lindley's old articles and contributions to discussions and, even when he seemed like something of an extremist at...
The fractal nature of scientific revolutions, again
Shravan writes, In his book, Fooled by Randomness, Taleb essentially rejects the notion that past results [knowledge] can increase information incrementally. For example, he says [approvingly] that Popper "refused to blindly accept the notion that knowledge can always increase with...
Want to be a 21st century intellectual? Learn about Bayes!
Futurist George Dvorsky included Bayesianism into the list of Must-know terms for the 21st Century intellectual: Bayesian Rationality: Bayesian rationality is a probabilistic approach to reasoning. Bayesian rationalists describe probability as the degree to which a person should believe a...
Mapping of Probabilities: Theory for the Interpretation of Uncertain Physical Measurements
Here's the abstract for a talk by Dr. Albert Tarantola, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris: While the conventional way for making inferences from observations goes through the use of conditional probabilities (via de Bayes identity), there is an...
Fooled by randomness
Naseem Taleb's publisher sent me a copy of "Fooled by randomness: the hidden role of chance in life and the markets" to review. It's an important topic, and the book is written in a charming style--I'll try to respond in...
Last post on Popper (I hope)?
Jasjeet writes, Hi Andrew, I saw your recent exchange on falsification on your blog. I mostly agree with you, but I think the view of falsification presented is a little too simple---this is an issue with Popper's stance. I say...
One more time on Bayes, Popper, and Kuhn
There was a lot of fascinating discussion on this entry from a few days ago. I feel privileged to be able to get feedback from scientists with different perspectives than my own. Anyway, I'd like to comment on some things...
Bayes, Popper, and Kuhn
Since I'm referring to other people's stuff, let me link to a recent entry on statistics and philosophy in Dan Navarro's blog. Which I pretty much agree with except for the remark that Bayesian statistics is Kuhnian. I disagree strongly--I...
Bayes and Popper
Is statisticsl inference inductive or deductive reasoning? What is the connection between statistics and the philosophy of science? Why do we care? The usual story Schools of statistical inference are sometimes linked to philosophical approaches. "Classical" statistics--as exemplified by Fisher's...
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