CategoryProbability
The Monday Micro Softy 10: The Monte Hall Problem
In this case, it comes down to: How badly do you want a goat in your life?
Monday Micro Softy 7: Who’s the Champ?
A single number does not always determine which player is better
Monday Micro Softy 6: Bad Adding?
It looked to Claude like young Clay’s numbers didn’t add up but he seemed confident. What did he know that his father at first didn’t?
Do Fantasy Sports Tell Us Something About Artificial Intelligence?
My biggest takeaway from my own involvement is how well fantasy football illuminates some weaknesses of artificial intelligence (AI)
The World Series of Coin Flips
Here we go again with the annual coin-flipping ritual known as the World Series
P-Hacking: The Perils of Presidential Election Models
History professor Alan Lichtman’s model uses 13 true/false questions reflecting likely voter interests. But some of them seem rather subjective
Presidential Pundits—a P-Hacking Parable
In politics, as elsewhere, too many studies flop when other researchers attempt to replicate them with fresh data
What the Luck? How Luck Matters to Olympic and Major League Wins
One way to think about the relative importance of skill and luck is to consider the consistency of the outcomes
The Two-Sided Lottery Card Paradox and Infinity
Assuming the infinite often leads to ridiculous conclusions.
A Physicist Tries to Avoid the Fact of Design in Our Universe…
Physicist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University argues, against apparent fine-tuning, that our universe’s cosmological constant should have a special value like zero, but doesn’tIn his discussion with Robert Lawrence Kuhn at Closer to Truth, Tufts physicist and cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin addresses the question, “Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life and Mind?”: If the deep laws of the universe had been ever so slightly different human beings wouldn’t, and couldn’t, exist. All explanations of this exquisite fine-tuning, obvious and not-so-obvious, have problems or complexities. Natural or supernatural, that is the question. Vilenkin — who is also a professor of evolutionary science — concedes the main point: Alexander Vilenkin: [0:40] Well yeah that’s right. It appears that the Universe is fine-tuned in the sense that there are about 30 constants of nature which take some specific value: if you look at these numbers, they look Read More ›
The Search for ET Should Quit Claiming Earth Is Not Special
How will we assess the raw probability of being alone in this universe when we have no other universe to compare with ours?
A Modest Proposal for the MLB
Major League Baseball got greedy and needs to reform.
The MLB Coin-Flipping Contest
What are the chances that wild-card teams will make it to the World Series and win?
Does the Evidence for Our Universe’s Fine-Tuning Mean Anything?
Why is a divine Mind not “scientific” if the evidence points in that direction?
Did “Evolution” Wire Human Brains to “Act Like Supercomputers”?
In making such a claim, psychology researchers may have got more than they bargained for
Sabrina Ionescu’s Hot Hand
When basketball players hit a "streak," does that elevate the probability of success?This Time, Houston Was Blessed More by Luck Than by Stolen Signs
The victory parade over, let’s look at whether luck had more to do with the Astros’ success than Astro fans want to admitThe Houston Astros are the 2022 Major League Baseball (MLB) World Champion — this time, as far as we know, without relying on electronically stolen pitching signs sent to batters by banging trashcan lids or using buzzers hidden under uniforms. Now that the champagne has popped and the victory parade has been held, let’s consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, luck had more to do with the Astros’ success than Astro fans want to admit. Athletes and fans want to believe that the team that wins the World Series, Super Bowl, or any other championship is the best team that year. The reality is that in every sport — some more than others — outcomes are influenced by good Read More ›
Step Away From Stepwise Regression (and Other Data Mining)
Stepwise regression, which is making a comeback, is just another form of HARKing — Hypothesizing After the Results are KnownThere is a strong correlation between the number of lawyers in Nevada and the number of people who died after tripping over their own two feet. There are similarly impressive correlations between U.S. crude oil imports and the per capita consumption of chicken — and the number of letters in the winning word in the Scripps National Spelling Bee and the number if people killed by venomous spiders. If you find these amusing (as I do), there are many more at the website Spurious Correlations. These silly statistical relationships are intended to demonstrate that correlation is not causation. But no matter how often or how loudly statisticians shout that warning, many people do not hear it. When there is a Read More ›
We Love Baseball Because of — Not Despite — Lady Luck
With a big game approaching, emotions run high so let’s heed some statistical realitiesAs we approach the MLB All-Star Game in Los Angeles on July 19, we can be confident of one thing — most current league leaders will not do as well after the break as they did before it. Baseball broadcaster and National Sportswriter of the Year Peter Gammons was among the first to notice this. He wrote in 1989 that, of those baseball players who hit more than 20 home runs before the All-Star break, 90 percent pegged fewer than 20 after the break. Gammons concluded that there was a “second-half power outage,” perhaps because the sluggers got nervous about the possibility of breaking a home run record. More recently, sports forecaster Max Kaplan made a similar observation, which he Read More ›