Books

Books that I have written.

pyndamics3

Dynamical systems simulation in Python. Includes both continuous and stochastic simulation.

Stats for Everyone

An introductory stats book from a Bayesian perspective, including Python software.

Blog

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Expressing Ignorance or why Bayes is not to be feared

I continue with my critique of the article Why I am not a Bayesian by Greg Mayer, where complains about the Bayesian approach to inference, and then espouses Maximum Likelihood …

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Priors vs Likelihoods or why Bayes is not to be feared

I was reading the article Why I am not a Bayesian where Greg Mayer complains about the Bayesian approach to inference, and espouses Maximum Likelihood methods. There is much to …

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Superseding the $t$ test A Bayesian comparison of means

There's a very nice paper, Bayesian estimation supersedes the t test. John K. Kruschke, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2013, v.142(2), pp.573-603. The methods described provide at …

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Simple Questions that Get to the Heart of the Matter

E. T. Jaynes wrote extensively about Bayesian inference, and one of his strategies was to use a "Galileo's telescope for statistics", such as outlined in his paper on Confidence Intervals …

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Misquoting Hume The problem with words over math

I recall a comment in E. T. Jaynes' book about Laplace, where he realized that most of the arguments against the claims of Laplace were arguments against things Laplace never …

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Demo vs Experiment Science fair gone wrong

I was a judge for a local science fair this past week, and found a number of projects lacking. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that one …

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We should all be biased

A friend and colleague of mine said to me recently that she was nervous that she might become "biased against any new health invention/method/etc... because virtually all of …

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LaTeX vs Word Why I Prefer The Less WYSIWYG Solution

Reading this review of a PloS One comparison between MS Word and LaTeX, I was struck by how much it resonates. There are many things that I do in both …

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The Longest Night Ever Concerning Specialness and Understanding

I recently saw a claim that this past December 21 was the longest solstice night ever...in the history of the planet! When I first heard this, and when I …

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Why Python is the language everyone should learn

I have been a fan of the Python programming language for many years. It was encouraging to me lately that there are two articles about Python, reiterating many of my …

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Evolution and Morality We can do better

In an ongoing discussion about morality, I said

It is perfectly plausible to me that an evolutionary framework explains much of the process of getting our current moral intuitions, such …

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Objective Morality Defined What do I mean anyway?

I was asked the following question about my claim that objective moral values exist:

When you say that you firmly believe in objective morality, do you mean objective relative to …

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Objective Morality A Matter of Complexity

In a recent Dogma Debate Episode, we have a debate between the position of objective morality as espoused by Matt Dillahunty and subjective morality as espoused by John Figdor. I …

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Statistical Inference for Everyone (sie)

This is a new approach to an introductory statistical inference textbook, motivated by probability theory as logic. It is targeted to the typical Statistics 101 college student, and covers the …

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Something from Nothing

In a talk about something from nothing, Lawrence Krauss describes how physics addresses the concept of "nothing". He has been criticized here and again here, primarily for redefining "nothing" in …

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What is AI? A biologists misguided assessment

In his blog post, Chatbots are boring. They aren't AI., PZ Myers the professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Morris has this to say about chatbots and AI …

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Naturalism of the Gaps? Not so much

I heard a term yesterday that I hadn't every heard before, while listening to a very interesting interview/debate with Mike Licona on the Resurrection. The term is "naturalism of …

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Three Years of Weather Surface Maps Of The United States

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I just posted an 8-minute movie I made showing weather maps for 3 years from July 2011 to September 2014. These surface maps are archived at the Unisys Weather Image …

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