Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

In a famous (to readers of this blog) example of statistical error, a researcher reported that beautiful parents were 36% more likely to have girl babies. The saps at Freakonomics fell for this one hook, line, and sinker, but I was suspicious, being ...

John “not Towering Inferno” Williams points to this new research article by Valentin Portmann et al., which states:

Climate models show considerable discrepancies in their future projections around the Atlantic, mainly due to uncertainties in the fate of the Atl...

Here’s Ed Regis in 1993, reviewing a book from that year by physicist Steven Weinberg:

Currently, the most favoured explanation for the electroweak asymmetry involves the postulation of a new elementary particle, the so-called Higgs boson . . . On...

This post is by Bob

There are several reasons I prefer central intervals.

First, you can’t tell how much of the probability is above or below a highest posterior density interval. For example, if I look at the HPD for an exponential distribution, it will run from 0 to the inverse cdf of the interval probability. If I look at the HPD for a normal, it match...

I came across this piece by John Ziman from 1989, in the middle of the “cold fusion” hoopla:

When scientific controversies erupt like this, one must obviously try to grasp the essential points at issue. The mere fact that these points are seriously dispute...