Category Archives: Science

THE 2015 WORLD SERIES— DANIEL MURPHY’S EXPERIMENT IN RANDOMNESS.

THE 2015 WORLD SERIES—DANIEL MURPHY’S EXPERIMENT IN RANDOMNESS. The 2015 World Series between the Mets and the Royals begins tonight. In addition to the games, there will be an experiment in randomness. I posted here six years ago about the … Continue reading

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PREDICTIONS SHOULD USE NUMBERS.

PREDICTIONS SHOULD USE NUMBERS. I posted here in 2007 about how there was a time when weather forecasts were expressed in words rather than probabilities.The forecast would say “partly cloudy” or “partly sunny” and they meant the same thing. I … Continue reading

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ECONOMICS HAS A DIFFERENT REPLICATION PROBLEM.

ECONOMICS HAS A DIFFERENT REPLICATION PROBLEM. Megan McArdle posted here on the Bloomberg website about a recent paper from the staff of the Federal Reserve Board which “argues that economics has problems similar to those recently found in psychology: A … Continue reading

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29 WAYS OF DESIGNING AN EXPERIMENT.

29 WAYS OF DESIGNING AN EXPERIMENT. The Economist reported here on an experiment by professors Raphael Silberzahn of IESE and Eric Uhlmann to address the question: Do dark-skinned soccer players get given red cards more often than light-skinned ones? This … Continue reading

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HOW HEAVY IS A LARGE TREE?

HOW HEAVY IS A LARGE TREE? I was astounded by the answer. For the answer, read to the end, where the answer is written in words. The Archaeology article tells how one of the difficulties of preserving what remains of … Continue reading

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THE IG NOBELS RECOGNIZE THE DISCOVERY THAT “HUH” IS A UNIVERSAL WORD.

THE IG NOBELS RECOGNIZE THE DISCOVERY THAT “HUH” IS A UNIVERSAL WORD. I posted here about the discovery by Mark Dingemanse, Francisco Torreira, and N. J. Enfield that “Huh” is a universal word—a word that is found in every—or almost … Continue reading

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IT’S NOT A SCOOP UNLESS OTHERS REPORT ON IT.

IT’S NOT A SCOOP UNLESS OTHERS REPORT ON IT. My caption for the last post said that Gleanings in Bee Culture had gotten a scoop on the flights by the Wright brothers. There is a sense in which it would … Continue reading

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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE GETS THE SCOOP ON THE WRIGHT BROTHERS.

GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE GETS THE SCOOP ON THE WRIGHT BROTHERS. I posted here on James Salter’s review of David McCullough’s book THE WRIGHT BROTHERS. John Lanchester has a review of the book in the London Review of Books (September … Continue reading

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THE STONEHENGE HIDDEN LANDSCAPE PROJECT.

THE STONEHENGE HIDDEN LANDSCAPE PROJECT. The reason for the recent discoveries near Stonehenge is that there is now a Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project. Here is its website, which shows the scope of the Project—“a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, … Continue reading

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SOME REASONS WHY THE REPRODUCIBILITY PROJECT WAS BOUND TO FIND SOME STUDY RESULTS THAT DON’T HOLD UP.

SOME REASONS WHY THE REPRODUCIBILITY PROJECT WAS BOUND TO FIND SOME STUDY RESULTS THAT DON’T HOLD UP. Kids, there are good reasons to have expected that only a portion of research results would hold up when the study is replicated. … Continue reading

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