statistics

A guide to the weird numbers that run our world, describing financial bubbles & climate change.

Summary: Two of our greatest challenges in the 21st century are climate change and management of economic crises. They’re similar in that their mathematics are unlike that of the normal life — the routine world of averages, variances, and bell-curve distributions. These phenomena take us deep into the mysteries of science. Before we can predict …

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We see the world in terms of facts (mostly numbers). Our world changes rapidly, including the past’s numbers

Summary:  Another disturbing way in which Orwell’s 1984 foreshadows our world. We see the world as numbers.  Fixed numbers, such as its size.  And numbers measuring its condition:  population, income, temperature, and so forth.  We measure history by the march of these numbers.  But a form of relativity has infected our databases, as the record …

We see the world in terms of facts (mostly numbers). Our world changes rapidly, including the past’s numbers Read More »

An important step to take before we spend a trillion dollars to save the planet from global warming

There will be many benefits of ClimateGate, the liberation of emails and documents from the UK Climate Research Unit. One of them might be the professional handling of the global temperature datasets, one of the great scandals of climate science. As described in this comment by Ross McKitrick, posted at Climate Audit on 12 August 2009. …

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