Now on ScienceBlogs: And so, driven on ceaselessly toward new shores
Finding the fun in good math; Shredding bad math and squashing the crackpots who espouse it.
Mark Chu-Carroll (aka MarkCC) is a PhD Computer Scientist, who works for Google as a Software Engineer. My professional interests center on programming languages and tools, and how to improve the languages and tools that are used for building complex software systems.
Category: Bad Probability
I normally try to ignore things like this, but this is just too funny. In general, I find arguments like this to be extremely silly. This is, basically, like playing with gematria - only instead of doing real gematria...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 3:29 PM • 93 Comments •
Category: Bad Probability
Via the Bad Astronomer comes one of the most pathetic abuses of probability that I've ever seen. I'm simply amazed that this idiot was willing to go on television and say this. The Daily Show With Jon StewartM -...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 5:37 PM • 37 Comments •
Category: Bad Probability
A simple, silly, but entertaining example of mathematical illiteracy by way of the Associated Press: OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- The odds are against something this odd. But a Nebraska Lottery official says there was no mistake: The same three...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 11:44 AM • 12 Comments •
Category: Bad Probability
One of the blogs I read regularly is Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science". I recommend it highly. (Which reminds me that I really need to find some time to update my blogroll!) In saturday's entry, he discussed a BBC Radio...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 11:18 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Bad Probability
An alert reader sent me link to a stupid article published by Reuters about the Olympics and Astrology. It's a classic kind of crackpot silliness, which I've described in numerous articles before. It's yet another example of pareidolia -...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 5:42 PM • 19 Comments •
Category: Debunking Creationism
Once again, you, my readers, have come through with some really high-grade crackpottery. This one was actually sent to me by its author, but I didn't really look at it until several readers sent me the same link because...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 2:35 PM • 21 Comments •
Category: Bad Probability
Remember when I talked about the problems with Bayesian probability? As you'll probably recall, one of the things that drives me crazy about Bayesianism is that you get a constant stream of crackpots abusing it. Since the basic assumption...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 2:12 PM • 51 Comments •
Category: Bad Probability
The bulk of this part of the review is looking at the total train-wreck that is chapter 4, which contains Bittinger's version of dreadful probabilistic arguments for why Christianity must be true. But before I do that, I need...
Posted by Mark C. Chu-Carroll at 10:23 AM • 13 Comments •
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
