Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

The Anthropic Principle in Statistics and Science

The anthropic principle in physics states that our existence implies certain constraints on the natural conditions under which we evolved. In statistics, a corresponding anthropic principle can be used to infer properties of the models we should fit to data. For example, experiments are typically aimed to have a precisi...

We’re very excited about this book. It’s the result of several years of effort. You can order from the publisher or

Last month I wrote the following post. I scheduled it for November, but then some Scientific American-related news arose, so I’m bumping it up in the schedule.

First, here’s my post from May:

I’m not saying this is the same Scientific American as old. Martin Gardner is long gone, and in the age of social media the articles are shorter. That’s the way of ...

Jim Moody points to this news article, “Why have papers by one of history’s most ...

I just wrote a long post inspired by a recent post from economist Paul Krugman. Krugman’s post was good, but I’m anno...