Bad Math
goodmath | January 21, 2007Yet 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 to help provide cover for the anti-global warming cranks. Now, in light of all of the
data that we've gathered, and all of the different kinds of analyses that have been used
on that data, for anyone in the real world, it's pretty undeniable that global warming is
a real phenomena, and that at least part of it is due to humanity.
One of the standard arguments from…
goodmath | January 18, 2007Yet 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
named "Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin", and it's an attempt to paint illegal
immigrants as a bunch of filthy criminal lowlifes. It's titled "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants in the United States."
With a title like that, you'd think that she has actual data showing that nearly one million sex crimes were…
goodmath | January 17, 2007 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, because the way that the PDF is formatted,
it requires a huge amount of manually editing.) This is a virtual masterwork of
goofy clueless Christian arrogance - everything truly good must be Christian, so
the author had to find some way of saying that mathematics is intrinsically tied to Christianity.
This article actually reminds me rather a lot of…
goodmath | December 9, 2006This 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 the hell away from *any* service provided by Verizon; my experience with them suggests that this is absolutely typical.
The basic story is that the guy who recorded this took a trip to Canada. Before he left, he checked with Verizon about how much it would cost him to use his cellphone for internet access during his trip, and was told that it cost 0.002 *cents* per kilobyte…
goodmath | December 7, 2006Tons 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][bbc-story]. This is an absolutely *infuriating* story, which does an excellent job of demonstrating what total innumerate idiots reporters are.
[bbc-story]: http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/content/articles/2006/12/06/divide_zero_…
What this guy has done is invent a new number, which he calls "nullity". This number is not on the number line, can't be compared to other numbers by less than or greater than, etc. In other words, he's given…
goodmath | December 6, 2006One 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 really bad math to make their arguments.
There are two fundamental questions about ethanol as fuel where the bad math comes in:
1. How much energy does it cost to *produce* ethanol compared to the amount of
energy released by *consuming* ethanol?
2. How much pollution is generated by the process of producing ethanol?
There are numerous reports or studies from both sides of…
goodmath | November 28, 2006Fellow [SBer Tara from Aetiology][tara] pointed me at [this bit of inanity][loonytune], which I can't resist mocking:
[tara]: http://www.scienceblogs.com/aetiology
[loonytune]: http://www.wdcmedia.com/newsArticle.php?ID=2306
>The mystery of the human genome has come into clearer focus as scientists have discovered that each
>individual person is at least ten times more different than another person than scientists
>previously thought, discounting even further the theory of evolution so widely taught around the
>world. A group of scientists from 13 different research centers in the…
goodmath | November 21, 2006One of my fellow ScienceBloggers, [Karmen at Chaotic Utopia](http://scienceblogs.com/chaoticutopia/2006/11/puzzling_at_a_simpleminde…) pointed out a spectacularly stupid statement in [Casey Luskin's critique of Carl Zimmer][lutkin] (*another* fellow SBer) at the Discovery Institutes "Center for Science and Culture". Now normally, I might not pile on to tear-down of Casey (not because he doesn't deserve it, but because often my SciBlings do such a good job that I have nothing to add); but this time, he's crossed much too far into *my* territory, and I can't let that pass without at least a…
goodmath | November 20, 2006So, 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 evidence. Instead, they use it as
evidence for a very peculiar theory. It's an interesting approach for a couple of reasons: it
actually *proposes a theory* (a bad theory, but hey, at least it's a theory!); it uses some recent theories and observations as evidence; and it casts the whole concept of how the sun works as part of an elaborate conspiracy to prop up evolution…
goodmath | November 19, 2006One 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](http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE310.html) by other folks, so I haven't bothered to
add my two cents here at GM/BM. I hadn't heard anyone mention this old canard until
recently, when a reader wrote to me to ask if I could comment on it. I *hate* to disappoint
my readers, and this is *such* a great example of flaming bad math, so I figured what the heck. So hang on to your hats, here it comes!
There are a lot of…
goodmath | November 15, 2006As [PZ](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/chopra_go_play_with_steve_ir…) 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](http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2006/11/what_happens_af.html). Normally, when PZ comments on something like this, I have nothing to add; he does such a good job fisking
credulous morons. But this time, I actually have something to add.
We'll start with the trivial, and move on to the egregious:
>Thousands of patients have died,…
goodmath | November 8, 2006While 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 I was browsing around, looking at different ways of teaching math, trying to find fun stuff. In the process, I came across woo-math: that is, incredible crazy woo justified using crazy things derived from legitimate mathematics. And it's not just a bit of flakiness with a mathematical gloss: it's big-time, wacky, loonie-tunes grade woo-math: the [Rudolph Steiner Theosophical version of…
goodmath | October 26, 2006Yesterday, 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](http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Rove_dukes_it_out_with_NPR_1025.html))
>MR. SIEGEL: We're in the home stretch, though. And many might consider you on the optimistic end of >realism about --
>
>MR. ROVE: Not that you would be exhibiting a bias or anything like that. You're just making a comment.
>
>MR. SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you're looking at every day.
>
>MR. ROVE: No you're not. No…
goodmath | August 29, 2006I 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 and the subsequent discussion here.
It's interesting, because it demonstrates the kinds of debating tactics that people like Berlinski use to avoid actually confronting the genuine issue of their dishonesty. The key thing to me about this is that Berlinski is a reasonably competent mathematician - but watch how he sidesteps to avoid discussing any of the actual…
goodmath | August 28, 2006I'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 and forth is scheduled to appear here later this week.
-------------------------------
In my never-ending quest for bad math to mock, I was taking a look at the Discovery Institute's website, where I found an essay, On the Origin of Life, by David Berlinksi. Bad math? Oh, yeah. Bad, sloppy, crappy math. Some of which is just duplication of things I've criticized before, but…
goodmath | August 18, 2006Remember my post several weeks ago about ["The First Scientific Proof of God"?][georgie] The author, Georgie-boy Shollenberger popped up [in the comments yesterday][georgie-comments], and posted [a response][georgie-responds] on his blog.
This is how he describes this blog:
>This website is an example of how some math teachers are thinking and teaching
>your children. In general, this website is a Good Math, Bad Math web. On this
>web, debunking creationism is listed under the bad math category. So, your
>children are most likely taught by atheists. Is this what parents want?
If…
goodmath | August 15, 2006After 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, I've revised it somewhat, but the basic meat of it is still the same.
--------------------
There are a lot of really bad arguments out there written by anti-evolutionists based on incompetent use of probability. A typical example is [this one][crapcrap]. This article is a great example of the mistakes that commonly get made with probability based arguments, because it makes…
goodmath | August 14, 2006A 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 article. It's another one of those stupid attempts by creationists to assemble some *really big* numbers in order to "prove" that evolution is impossible.
>One More Calculation
>
>The following is a calculation, based entirely on numbers provided by
>Darwinists themselves, of the number of small selective steps evolution would
>have to…
goodmath | August 9, 2006Yesterday, I posted [this article][bozo] 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 actually has [a collection of "devotionals"][devotional] to be presented along with the lecture in a basic calculus course.
They're sufficiently insane that I have to quote a couple of them. No comment that I could possibly make could add anything to the sheer goofiness of these.
For the lesson on "Function Operations":
>**God's Surgical…
goodmath | August 8, 2006By 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 conference, he featured a speech by Paul Jehle about "Evaluating your Philosophy of Education".
Jehle is... umm... how do we say this politely?....
Ah, screw it. Jehle is a fucking frothing at the mouth nutjob lunatic asshole.
His basic argument - the argument that he *expects people to take seriously* - is that *everything* is either christian…