Every vicious cycle is also a virtuous cycle
What I have to share today is a simple idea that I’ve found really motivating. When I feel like I’m stuck in a loop of choices I regret, each leading to the next in a vicious cycle, I remind myself that every vicious cycle can also be a virtuous cycle. For example, if I don’t […]
Binary compression of continuous data
“Which am I supposed to use: mean or median?” Early on in my stats classes, we talk about how to describe the distribution of a piece of numerical information — things like height, weight, age, income, and so on that can vary continuously. A good description should cover three aspects of the distribution: A measure […]
More information doesn’t have to make you more certain
FiveThirtyEight recently posted a piece called “The Impeachment Hearings Just Confirmed Voters’ Preexisting Opinions”: the same wave of new information has just made everybody more convinced of what they already thought: One explanation of this phenomenon is “motivated reasoning”: a person finding data more reliable and arguments more convincing if they fit with what the […]
The metric that matters
What’s the best way to measure progress toward long-term goals? For some goals, like “Read 100 novels in 2020,” it’s easy to measure your progress as you go, and you’ll know pretty quickly whether you’re on track to complete your goal. But if your goal is to write a novel, it’s not clear how to […]
German tanks and Doomsday
In World War II, allied forces faced an unusual statistical puzzle: to make good strategic decisions, they needed to know roughly how many tanks Germany was building every month, but they had very limited evidence whether that number was small or large. One clue was that captured tanks had serial numbers on some of their […]
10 percent liable
Last month, this New York Times headline caught my eye for three reasons: Netherlands Was 10 Percent Liable in Srebrenica Deaths, Top Dutch Court Finds Reason #1: Having lived in the Netherlands, headlines about Dutch affairs usually stick out to me. Reason #2: I’d just been reading The Themis Files, a fiction series in which […]
You’ll never believe what weird trick fixes p-values
Okay, I’m taking a quick break from my regular posts because I can’t stop geeking out about this recent XKCD comic: If you already know about clickbait (likely) and p-values (less likely), you may not need the joke explained to you. But there’s something deep going on here too, tying into the themes of probability […]
If you have a question, someone else probably has it too…
I often tell my students, “When you have a question, ask, because you’re probably not the only one who’s wondering.” I heard the same thing when I was a student, but I still felt embarrassed to ask. What if I really was the only one? Wouldn’t I be slowing down class to ask? If no […]
Broadcasting beliefs
I have the perfect cure for hiccups: chug five or six swallows of water while plugging your ears. (So in addition to the water, you need either someone to hold your ears for you, or a straw to drink through while you hold your own ears.) This technique has never failed me or Clara, and we’ve used […]
Your Advertisement Here!
On billboards, during movie theater previews, among those ads for lawyers and ESL teachers on public transit—I love coming across instances of the “Your advertisement could be here!” filler that advertising companies use when their advertising space goes unfilled. For one thing, I’m tickled by the meta-ness of advertising for advertising. For another, some of the more creative […]