CategoryProbability
Monday Micro Softy 28: Beating the Odds of Winning Sweepstakes?
Does it make a difference when the sweepstakes hobbyist sends in her entries?
The Linda Problem Revisited, As If Reality Matters
Part 2: AI enthusiasts use false claims for humans' “natural stupidity” to bolster claims for machine intelligence
Humans Aren’t That Biased — and Machines Aren’t That Smart
Part 1: At an upcoming conference on AI, I will be puncturing that particular AI enthusiast’s fantasy
Monday Micro Softy 11: What Happened to That Other Dollar?
Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy get the discount for their cheap hotel rooms but the figures don’t really add up
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?