bad math:
I just had to promote this to the top level of the blog. If you remember, way back in December, I posted something about Sal Cordova's new blog. (As an interesting sidenote, Sal started his blog after supposedly resigning...
Posted on April 5, 2008 6:30 PM • 11 Comments •
Yet another alert reader just sent me a link to this extremely humorous blog. It's not recent, but it's silly enough that it's worth pointing out even now. I'm not one hundred percent sure that this isn't a parody....
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Posted on December 28, 2007 9:41 PM • 52 Comments •
Look folks, I don't want to become an economics blogger! Stop sending me economics questions. I hate to disappoint my readers and not answer their questions, but this economics stuff is almost terminally dull to me. The mortgage posts...
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Posted on December 21, 2007 12:55 PM • 136 Comments •
I've received an amazing number of requests in the short period of time since my last post to explain "Tranching". I mentioned it off-handedly, but a lot of people have heard about its role in the whole sub-prime mess,...
Posted on December 19, 2007 3:54 PM • 11 Comments •
Reading the news lately, I've come across an amazing example of how ubiquitous bad math can be used. Most of you have probably heard about what's been called "the sub-prime crisis". Despite a lot of media hand-wringing about how...
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Posted on December 19, 2007 11:21 AM • 50 Comments •
My fellow SBer Craig McClain sent me a link to yet another an example of how mind-bogglingly innumerate people are. At least, for once it's not Americans. The British lottery put out a "scratch-off" game called "Cool Cash". The...
Posted on November 7, 2007 10:46 AM • 49 Comments •
Now, it's time for the final chapter in my "visits with old friends" series, which brings us back to the Good Math/Bad Math all-time reader favorite crackpot: Mr. George Shollenberger. Last time I mentioned George, a number of readers...
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Posted on November 5, 2007 4:19 PM • 9 Comments •
Checking In on Old Friends As long-time readers of this blog know, there are a few crackpots who I've written about multiple times. Those nutters have their fans, and people seem to want to hear about what they're up to....
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Posted on October 8, 2007 10:31 AM • 87 Comments •
As of 2/24/2008, Sewell has just responded to this, pretending that he just noticed it. To make discussions easier to follow, I have responded with a new post here, and I would appreciate it if comments could be posted there,...
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Posted on September 26, 2007 4:23 PM • 56 Comments •
Via Atrios, I found this article at the American Prospect, which demonstrates an example of a very common and very serious math error that's constantly made in the media: unit errors. If you want to compare two numbers, you...
Posted on September 12, 2007 9:19 PM • 22 Comments •
If you remember, a while back, I wrote about a British computer scientist named James Anderson, who claimed to have solved the "problem" of "0/0" by creating a new number that he called nullity. The creation of nullity was...
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Posted on September 9, 2007 11:01 AM • 41 Comments •
Once upon a time, I wrote about a jackass who was criticizing his college math instructor, because the instructor couldn't explain what made the calculus class christian, or why it was different from what would be taught in a...
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Posted on August 8, 2007 7:31 PM • 67 Comments •
There's one piece of bad math that I've encountered relatively frequently in conversations. It's incredibly frustrating to me, because it's just so crazy - but the way we teach math and physics, far to many people just don't have...
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Posted on August 6, 2007 9:33 AM • 37 Comments •
After seeing PZs comments on Stuart Pivar's new version of his book, titled "Lifecode: From egg to embryo by self-organization", I thought I would try taking a look. I've long thought that much of the stuff that I've read...
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Posted on July 21, 2007 8:26 PM • 41 Comments •
My fellow ScienceBloggers Orac and MarkH have gotten entangled in arguments with some rather... how to phrase this?... enthusiastic folks arguing against smoking as a cause of cancer, and particularly against the idea that second-hand smoke could possibly be...
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Posted on July 19, 2007 1:23 PM • 175 Comments •
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal has a spectacular example of really bad math. The WSJ is, in general, an excellent paper with really high quality coverage of economic issues. But their editorials page has long been a haven for some of...
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Posted on July 14, 2007 12:00 PM • 67 Comments •
In the comments on my DMCA post, a reader asked me to comment on this piece of silliness. I try not to disappoint my readers, so here's my take. It's a pile of silliness with the distinct aroma of...
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Posted on May 10, 2007 4:10 PM • 25 Comments •
When I'm bored, I'll periodically take a look at the blogs published by the bozos at the Discovery Institute. I can generally find something good for a laugh. So I was doing that tonight, and came across yet another...
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Posted on April 24, 2007 8:05 AM • 24 Comments •
As I mentioned a while back, I was loaned the Library of Congress discard of George Shollenberger's book. Since he's made such a big deal about how unfair I've been by not reading and considering his argument, I've actually...
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Posted on April 21, 2007 9:19 PM • 60 Comments •
Apparently, Michael Egnor just can't get enough of making himself look like an idiot. His latest screed is an attack on me, for criticizing his dismissal of evolution as a tautology....
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Posted on April 4, 2007 10:06 AM • 38 Comments •
A couple of weeks ago, I revisited George Shollenberger, the creator the alleged "First Scientific Proof of God", and commented on his pathetic antics on amazon.com, trying to explain just why no one had bothered to post a single...
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Posted on April 2, 2007 9:14 PM • 42 Comments •
So over at the DI whiners blog, Egnor is, once again, trying to pretend that he's actually making a case for why evolution is irrelevant to antibiotic resistance. It's really getting silly; he repeats the same nonsense over and...
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Posted on March 29, 2007 8:09 PM • 20 Comments •
So the Discovery Institute's most recent addition has chosen to reply to my post about tautologies. (Once again, I'm not linking to him; I will not willingly be a source of hits for the DI website when they're promoting...
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Posted on March 17, 2007 9:18 PM • 116 Comments •
My fellow SBer Craig Hilberth at the Cheerful Oncologist writes about a meta-analysis that purports to show the positive effect of intercessory prayer. Neither Craig nor I have access to the full paper. But what we know is that...
Posted on March 16, 2007 5:45 PM • 23 Comments •
In the comments to another post, Blake Stacey gave me a pointer to a really obnoxious article, called "A New Theory of the Universe", by a Robert Lanza, published in the American Scholar. Lanza's article is a rotten piece...
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Posted on March 13, 2007 9:35 PM • 116 Comments •
Many of my fellow SBers have been mocking the recently unveiled Conservapedia. Conservapedia claims to be a reaction to the liberal bias of Wikipedia. Ed, PZ, Afarensis, Tim, John, and Orac have all piled on already. But why should...
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Posted on February 21, 2007 3:58 PM • 76 Comments •
Yet another reader forwarded me a link to a rather dreadful article. This one seems to be by someone who knows better, but prefers to stick with his political beliefs rather than an honest exploration of the facts. He's trying...
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Posted on January 21, 2007 7:39 PM • 44 Comments •
Yet another reader sent me a great bad math link. (Keep 'em coming guys!) This one is an astonishingly nasty slight of hand, and a great example of how people misuse statistics to support a political agenda. It's by someone...
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Posted on January 18, 2007 5:03 PM • 35 Comments •
Another piece of junk that I received: "The Invisible Link Between Mathematics and Theology", by a guy named "Ladislav Kvasz", published in a rag called "Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith". (I'm not going to quote much from this,...
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Posted on January 17, 2007 4:34 PM • 28 Comments •
This was posted on slashdot, and forwarded to me by several readers. It's worth listening to the first few minutes to get an idea of just how pathetically inummerate many people are. It might also help convince you to stay...
Posted on December 9, 2006 5:47 PM • 29 Comments •
Tons of folks have been writing to me this morning about the BBC story about an idiot math teacher who claims to have solved the problem of dividing by zero. This is an absolutely infuriating story, which does an excellent...
Posted on December 7, 2006 9:49 AM • 132 Comments •
One thing I've been hearing a lot lately is discussions about Ethanol, and it's been really pissing me off. Can ethanol be a serious replacement for oil as a source of energy? I don't know. Because both sides are using...
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Posted on December 6, 2006 8:14 PM • 44 Comments •
Fellow SBer Tara from Aetiology pointed me at this bit of inanity, which I can't resist mocking: The mystery of the human genome has come into clearer focus as scientists have discovered that each individual person is at least ten...
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Posted on November 28, 2006 3:35 PM • 40 Comments •
One of my fellow ScienceBloggers, Karmen at Chaotic Utopia pointed out a spectacularly stupid statement in Casey Luskin's critique of Carl Zimmer (another fellow SBer) at the Discovery Institutes "Center for Science and Culture". Now normally, I might not pile...
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Posted on November 21, 2006 1:45 PM • 35 Comments •
So, as promised, it's time for part two of "The Creationists and the Shrinking Sun". The second main tack of the creationists and the shrinking sun is to not use the bare measurements of an allegedly shrinking sun as their...
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Posted on November 20, 2006 5:27 PM • 33 Comments •
One of the more pathetic examples of bad math from the creationist camp is an argument based on the claim that the sun is shrinking. This argument has been thoroughly debunked by other folks, so I haven't bothered to add...
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Posted on November 19, 2006 5:26 PM • 26 Comments •
As PZ pointed out, Deepak Chopra is back with yet another of his clueless, uninformed, idiotic rants. This time, he's written an article trying to "prove" that there is an afterlife. Normally, when PZ comments on something like this, I...
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Posted on November 15, 2006 9:43 PM • 84 Comments •
While waiting for I was innocently browsing around the net looking at elementary math curriculums. I want to be able to teach my kids some fun math, just like my dad did with me when I was a kid. So...
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Posted on November 8, 2006 9:09 PM • 65 Comments •
Yesterday, Karl Rove was interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR. I just about passed out from shock when I heard the following exchange: (transcript via raw story) MR. SIEGEL: We're in the home stretch, though. And many might consider you...
Posted on October 26, 2006 10:55 AM • 39 Comments •
I thought that for a followup to yesterday's repost of my takedown of Berlinksi, that today I'd show you a digested version of the debate that ensued when Berlinksi showed up to defend himself. You can see the original post...
Posted on August 29, 2006 9:00 AM • 26 Comments •
I'm away on vacation this week, so this is a repost of one of early GM/BM entries when it was on Blogger. As usual, I've revised it slightly. Berlinksi actually showed up and responded; a digest of the discussion back...
Posted on August 28, 2006 8:41 AM • 4 Comments •
Remember my post several weeks ago about "The First Scientific Proof of God"? The author, Georgie-boy Shollenberger popped up in the comments yesterday, and posted a response on his blog. This is how he describes this blog: This website is...
Posted on August 18, 2006 10:35 AM • 40 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
After yesterdays post about the sloppy probability from ann coulter's chat site, I thought it would be good to bring back one of the earliest posts on Good Math/Bad Math back when it was on blogger. As usual with reposts,...
Posted on August 15, 2006 9:48 AM • 22 Comments •
A reader sent me a copy of an article posted to "chat.anncoulter.com". I can't see the original article; anncoulter.com is a subscriber-only site, and I'll be damned before I register with that site. Fortunately, the reader sent me the entire...
Posted on August 14, 2006 9:27 AM • 40 Comments •
Yesterday, I posted this article about the bozo who didn't like his college calculus course because it wasn't Christian enough. One of the commenters pointed out that there's actually a site online where a college professor from a Christian college...
Posted on August 9, 2006 8:06 PM • 15 Comments •
By way of Pharyngula, I saw something that I simply had to repeat here. Every august, James Kennedy - a thoroughly repulsive ultra-fundy preacher from Coral Ridge Ministries - runs a conference called "Reclaiming America for Christ". At this years...
Posted on August 8, 2006 7:22 PM • 138 Comments •
Over at his blog, William Dembski, my least-favorite pathetic excuse for a mathematician, has cited an article written by one John Davison about the theory of evolution. According to Dembski, this article explains "why the naked emperor still lingers"; that...
Posted on August 3, 2006 5:02 PM • 21 Comments •
While taking a break from some puzzling debugging, I decided to hit one of my favorite comedy sites, Answers in Genesis. I can pretty much always find something sufficiently stupid to amuse me on their site. Today, I came across...
Posted on July 31, 2006 4:03 PM • 77 Comments •
I've been taking a look at William Dembski's paper, "Information as a Measure of Variation". It was recommended to me as a paper demonstrating Demsbki's skill as a mathematician that isn't aimed at evolution-bashing. I'm not going to go into...
Posted on July 27, 2006 11:50 AM • 8 Comments •
A reader sent me a link to yet another purported Bayesian argument for the existence of god, this time by a physicist named Stephen Unwin. It's actually very similar to Swinburne's argument, which I discussed back at the old home...
Posted on July 25, 2006 10:16 AM • 81 Comments •
This weekend, I came across Granville Sewell's article "A Mathematicians View of Evolution". My goodness, but what a wretched piece of dreck! I thought I'd take a moment to point out just how bad it is. This article, as described...
Posted on July 24, 2006 9:45 AM • 75 Comments •
A reader sent me a link to this amusing blog. It's by a guy named George Shollenberger, who claims to have devised The First scientific Proof of God (and yes, he always capitalizes it like that). George suffers from some...
Posted on July 20, 2006 1:48 PM • 51 Comments •
You might remember my post last week about conservatives who can't subtract: in particular, about how a conservative blogger who goes by "Captain Ed" attacked John Edwards for saying there are 37 million people in poverty in the US. It...
Posted on July 18, 2006 3:51 PM • 13 Comments •
There's been a bunch of discussion here at ScienceBlogs about whether or not mathematicians are qualified to talk about evolution, triggered by an article by ID-guy Casey Luskin. So far, Razib at Gene Expression, Jason atEvolutionBlog, and John at Stranger...
Posted on July 17, 2006 9:59 AM • 29 Comments •
Last night, a reader sent me a link to yet another wretched attempt to argue for the existence of God using Bayesian probability. I really hate that. Over the years, I've learned to dread Bayesian arguments, because so many of...
Posted on July 13, 2006 4:10 PM • 36 Comments •
This is a repost from GM/BMs old home; the original article appeared here. I'm reposting because someone is attempting to respond to this article, and I'd rather keep all of the ongoing discussions in one place. I also think it's...
Posted on July 12, 2006 10:15 AM • 5 Comments •
This has been written about elsewhere, but I can't let such a perfect example of the fundamental innumeracy of so many political pundits pass me by without commenting. Captain Ed of Captains Quarters complains about a speech by John Edwards...
Posted on July 11, 2006 6:12 PM • 12 Comments •
Via Feministe, we see a wingnut named Tim Worstall trying to argue something about sexual education. It's not entirely clear just what the heck he thinks his argument is; he wants to argue that sexual education "doesn't work"; his argument...
Posted on July 10, 2006 11:09 AM • 24 Comments •
About 10 days ago, I wrote a post about a group of bozos who believe they've found a secret code in the bible, and that according to them, there was going to be a nuclear attack on the UN building...
Posted on July 7, 2006 4:49 PM • 14 Comments •
In comments to my recent post about Gilder's article, a couple of readers asked me to take a look at a DI promoted paper by Albert Voie, called Biological function and the genetic code are interdependent. This paper was actually...
Posted on July 5, 2006 3:50 PM • 46 Comments •
As several other folks have mentioned, George Gilder has written a new anti-evolution article which was published in the National Review. There's a lot to hate in this article. It's a poorly written screed, which manages to mix together all...
Posted on July 4, 2006 1:01 PM • 54 Comments •
Earlier this week, I posted a brief article about the "True Bible Code" folks who claimed that NYC was going to be hit by a terrorist nuclear weapon this weekend. I was looking at the rest of their site to...
Posted on July 1, 2006 4:40 PM • 8 Comments •
Dishonest Dembski:the Universal Probability Bound One of the dishonest things that Dembski frequently does that really bugs me is take bogus arguments, and dress them up using mathematical terminology and verbosity to make them look more credible. An example of...
Posted on June 28, 2006 8:37 PM • 23 Comments •
As I've frequently said, statistics is an area which is poorly understood by most people, and as a result, it's an area which is commonly used to mislead people. The thing is, when you're working with statistics, it's easy to...
Posted on June 28, 2006 10:43 AM • 13 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
I just received some email that would seriously worry me if it weren't for the fact that I'm not an idiot. WARNING! TERRORISTS are going to ATTACK NEW YORK! There is NO TIME to waste! Go read http://www.truebiblecode.com/nyc.html!!!!!! Going there,...
Posted on June 27, 2006 6:30 PM • 7 Comments •
I recently got a real prize of a link from one of my readers. He'd enjoyed the Swinburne article, and had encoutered this monstrosity; an alleged probability of christianity argument significantly worse than Swinburne. The difference between Swinburne and this...
Posted on June 24, 2006 2:37 PM • 17 Comments •
I was glancing at the comments on the post that I linked to about "0.999...=1". And one of them was such a wonderful example of crap numerology, which I enjoy laughing at, that I just had to repost it here:...
Posted on June 18, 2006 3:56 PM • 8 Comments •
Finally, I have found online, a copy of the magnificent culmination of the 20th century's most ambitious work of mathematics. The last page of Russel and Whitehead's proof that 1+1=2. On page 378 (yes, three hundred and seventy eight!) of...
Posted on June 17, 2006 9:41 PM • <
