William M Briggs - Statistician to the Stars! Profile picture
Ex-SSgt. https://t.co/uURzW9z1pm EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE IS WRONG https://t.co/s38sBlV0fb PRICE OF PANIC https://t.co/LJtUCrnvAw UNCERTAINTY https://t.co/YRklZQUf5g
Postcards of the Hanging(s) Profile picture Jane Geraci Profile picture Ir Aristides F. Poort MSc Profile picture 3 subscribed
May 31 4 tweets 2 min read
How the worst statistical mistake of all time will doom us.

1. In Griggs v Duke Power Co, the Supreme Court in effect ruled that "discrimination" was henceforth a bad word, and that it could exist even when it did not. Image 2. Lack of Victim group proportion representation -in any activity or organization - became the standard for "proof" of discrimination, even if no person was individually "discriminated against" because he was a Victim.

This is the statistical mistake. Image
May 13 8 tweets 2 min read
Besides the rest of this fine thread, falsifiability is a failed philosophy.

1. Actually falsified but beloved or lucrative theories are rarely, or never, given up.

2. Most theories cannot be falsified. Most only say certain outcomes are improbable, not impossible. A theory must say X is IMPOSSIBLE, and we must observe X, for the theory to be falsified. That can happen, of course, but usually most theories are "fuzzy"; they say "X is NOT LIKELY", not impossible, so when X is observed, the theory is not falsified.
May 12 17 tweets 4 min read
My friends, the "climate change" scare is great nonsense.

Here is how I know.

We hate credentials & they are the least of my argument. But they impress the uninformed. My BS is in meteorology; my MS is atmospheric physics; my PhD is in math stats, looking at forecast goodness. I have published in the Journal of Climate, among many other places. I was a forecaster with the National Weather Service. I was on the American Meteorological Society's Probability & Statistics Committee. I was Associate editor of Monthly Weather Review.

Et cetera.
May 10 6 tweets 2 min read
Some notes on the Bud Light boycott victory

It was entirely spontaneous and unorganized. We can't do boycotts well, but this stuck.

The same men who said "Enough!" would go to Disney if their wives wanted to, even though Disney is far far worse. Men's wives don't pick the beer. After accounting for the genuine disgust of trannies prancing about, this is men not wanting to be seen as "faggots" or soft by other men. And they did this in a way they could directly control. No HR could lecture them on how they should buy the raindbow swill.
Mar 7 11 tweets 2 min read
Tuned into NPR to see if it's a bad as I remember.

They are dumping on Christianity. Many voices saying how they lost their faith. Usually through being exposed to "education".

"Deconstructors" trying to reinvent religion in their name.

Some soy voiced guy, etc. Professor of some kind. Uses upseak? Talks like this?
Mar 1 7 tweets 1 min read
I was asked "How can one substantiate the argument that sodomy is wrong?"

Many ways. Readers might care to add to this hastily compiled list.

1. A man masturbating into the rectum of another man (or woman), has done nothing worth doing. Masturbation rots souls. 2. It is dangerous. Rips, tears, blood, feces, anal warts, HIV, cancers, and diseases of all stripes, some yet to be discovered, are spread this way.

3. It is disgusting. True, some of the disgust is culturally learned. But most comes from the act being against Nature.
Feb 27 8 tweets 2 min read
Everybody has heard the saying “correlation doesn’t imply causation.”

Yet with wee Ps, scientists say "my correlation IS causation!"

Which is every time a logical fallacy. wmbriggs.com/post/45670/ Image The p-value says, “The null that a coincidence happened is true, and here is the probability of something that happened; therefore, my correlation is causation.” This is false, a fallacy.

Again, every use of a p-value is a fallacy. Every as in every. Each one. Every time.
Jan 28 20 tweets 4 min read
Homosexuality is a mental illness. Small thread on Emil O. W. Kirkegaard's piece with same name.

kirkegaard.substack.com/p/homosexualit… First, doing this argument by "the science" is doing it the hard way. One prone to all the standard mistakes "the science" makes. Such as hysterically waving wee P-values around and screaming "My correlation is a causation!" Kirkegaard sees this, in part.
Jan 27 5 tweets 1 min read
Told this story many times. I was at a major medical annual meeting, and well known doc was giving talk on pharmaceuticals.

I asked him, "How much of an effect do huge number of Ask Your Doctor If X Is Right For You ads have on prescription behavior?"

He denied ads had any. You have to laugh.

This was in mid 2000s, when I was a prof in the Cornell Medical school in Department of Medicine.
Jan 26 4 tweets 1 min read
Look, brother. They'd never go for it. Even if, per impossible, they said "Deal" to these terms, they'd violate every term within a month. Irrevocably.

And they'd award the arriving flood even more benefits.

Every term violates Equality, which they hold sacrosanct. Literally. And there is nothing more anti-Reality than Equality.

The left think the incoming wave is just as malleable as you do. Because Equality.

All we have to do, both sides think, is get them to believe an Idea and all will be well. The only dispute is over which Idea.
Jan 26 8 tweets 2 min read
To all those who doubted us for the last three years.

We told you so. About everything. The two things I guessed wrong was the slowness of arrival of the flu-like herd immunity, though from the beginning it was clear coronadoom would be with us forever.

Second was the length of the panic. I thought it would end I'd say two times in the last two years.
Jan 25 4 tweets 2 min read
Two and half years ago I set out on a quest to discover what was NOT racist.

The journey was long and arduous. I found only one thing: FRENCH FRIES.

There is a false report circulating that French fries are now racist.

wmbriggs.com/post/31807/ This is because a female went into a Taco Bell and demanded French fries, which are not on the menu.

She called the ABSENCE of French Fries racist.

The glorious hot parallelapiped potatoes are still not racist.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5…
Jan 19 8 tweets 2 min read
As difficult as it will be to accept for some, it is nevertheless true there are no such things as "heterosexuals" or "homosexuals" or "gays", "trannsexuals", "bisexuals", and on and on.

There are males and females - tout court. Whatever use the labels have as cataloging preferred behavior or desire, they do not represent special kinds of human being, like race.

(Funnily enough, the people who reject race embrace LGBTQWERTYism.)
Jan 19 5 tweets 1 min read
Church of England has held the line, but only by letting the orcs inside the gates.

They'll still admit only men and women can marry. But those who enjoy sodomy will receive an apology "for the 'rejection, exclusion and hostility' they have faced."

nationalreview.com/news/church-of… Which is like apologizing to mass murderer Kermit Gosnell for people giving him a mean look.

The Church will also still welcome same-sex couples who pretend to be married “unreservedly and joyfully.”
Jan 18 6 tweets 2 min read
"Support my perversion! Support my perversion! Say it is Good ! Say it is Good - or lose you job!" Also, Flyers, if you see Tortorella coming toward the showers, I'd grab a towel.
Dec 27, 2022 13 tweets 2 min read
This paper is a treasure.

Starts with a snide remark on the vax's "alleged side effects that are perpetuated".

Terrific propaganda word, "alleged". Allows you to take both sides of a question. Author says "staying unvaccinated is not just causing people to remain susceptible to viral outbreaks, but could also be causing more side effects seen in the vaccination process."

I wonder how many "alleged" vax injuries I caused by remaining unvaxxed?
Dec 27, 2022 8 tweets 2 min read
I like Zman, and think, like him, Gottfried won his recent debate (such as it was) with Anton, described in the link.
thezman.com/wordpress/?p=2…
But in comments somebody said, "The fact is that truth is contingent upon metaphysical assumptions", to which Zman responded: "... "A truth that is contingent upon anything other than physical reality is categorically different from a truth that is contingent upon something other than physical reality. Therein lies the problem with moral philosophy and theology. They are untethered from physical reality."
Dec 22, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Other day had this post: ChatGPT, AI, Bias & Models Doing What They Are Told wmbriggs.com/post/44115/

A reader writes of his experience. All the following is a quote:

"Regarding your recent piece about ChatGPT, I have been playing with it for awhile." "It's reponses can seem quite impressive, but frequently look like it has just done a bunch of Google searches and collated them into a single narrative. For technical questions, the answers frequently look like they're culled from sites like Wikipedia or StackOverflow."
Dec 20, 2022 9 tweets 2 min read
This is fun. An internecine war between atheists is playing out.

Two camps are Old School Materialists, like Dawkins, and Effeminate Woke Feelites, like Mehta.

My money's on the Woke. They have youth and are at least three orders of magnitude bug-eyed crazier. Image The craziness gives strength, and allows them to ignore the buffets and blows from Reality longer.

Kind of like how a madman can take several shots and keep on coming. For a time.
Dec 20, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
It's very odd.

Elites pretend that a slight increase in temperature would be bad - for EVERYTHING. When, history shows & this thread reminds, the opposite is true.

So they have scientists build models to say warming is bad, which makes all things bad. And, of course, all models only say what they are told to say, so it is easy to make models say warming makes all things bad.

It's easy to find scientists to do this, even when most are cautious about their calculations, because there are MANY scientists to pick from.
Dec 19, 2022 17 tweets 4 min read
How can we best describe this to minds addled by decades of propaganda? A THREAD.

Headline: "Earth could face a mass EXTINCTION by 2100: Supercomputer predicts more than a quarter of species will die by the end of the century".

dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar… 1. Remind them that all models only say what they are told to say? And this one was told to say something quite ridiculous?

2. Remind them that "computers" are dumb beasts, mere machines, and that models on them are no different than models on paper?