Books
Books that I have written.
Media Appearances
Podcasts and Videos in which I have appeared or which I have created.
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.
I am a Scientist, Skeptic, and Professor at Bryant University. My goal is to make technical subject matters widely accessible and to use my analytical and computational skills to assist anyone with their science-related problems.
Blog
Football Physics Why I'm not Convinced the Patriots Cheated
In another post, I outlined how the drop in pressure was entirely consistent with what was measured with the laws of physics. That post was done when the only data …
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We find God "not guilty" of existing
As part of the Unbelievable Project, I was listening to the Unbelievable podcast on the definition of atheism, whether it is "lack in a belief in God" or "believing that …
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On Miracles Hume was right all along
After my post about the misquoting Hume and the miraculous, I was recommended to read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on miracles where it supposedly explains why "Hume was …
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It's not the New Atheists that are Arrogant
In a Salon article entitled "New Atheism’s fatal arrogance: The glaring intellectual laziness of Bill Maher & Richard Dawkins", Sean Illing outlines what he seems to think are knock-down arguments …
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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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Testing the Supernatural How Science Deals with the Unknown
In an interesting paper entitled "Can Science Test Supernatural Worldviews", Yonatan Fishman proposes an unusual answer of "yes". I've spoken to this issue here and again here, where I refer …
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How to Deflate a Football Deflating Story Why Science Should Trump Personal Opinion
So, it's all over the news, the Patriots cheated with deflating the football by 1-2 psi, and are lying about not knowing anything about it. There are even claims that …
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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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