Ye Olde Jonathan Birge
Its days are numbered...
  • Best articles
  • Things to do on Earth
  • Things to do in Boston

Hypothesis testing proves ESP is real

By Jonathan On January 21, 2011 ·

Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that ESP proves frequentist statistics isn’t real. In what has got to be one of the best object lessons in why hypothesis testing (the same statistical method usually used by the medical research industry to produce the Scare of the Week) is prone to generate false [...]

Continue Reading →

Do open-access electronic journals really help science?

By Jonathan On June 19, 2008 ·

The latest fad in the scientific publishing world is open access e-journals. In my field, for example, the Optical Society of America’s Optics Express has become one of the most popular journals, despite being only a decade old. The journal is basically a peer-reviewed website; people submit self-produced papers in either Word or LaTeX [...]

Continue Reading →

The Great Hudson Arc: A 250-mile-wide mystery

By Jonathan On April 21, 2008 ·


(Click for a larger view.)

It’s nice to find out that there are still mysteries left in this world, let alone ones that are visible from space. On the southeast corner of Hudson Bay, the coast line traces a near perfect arc, roughly concentric on another ring of islands in the bay. [...]

Continue Reading →

Studies show reading this essay will make you smarter

By Jonathan On December 18, 2007 ·

Thus, by focusing on studies that seek to overturn existing belief, there may be an inherent bias in the medical profession to find false results. If so, it’s possible that a significant percentage of published studies are wrong, far in excess of that suggested by the published significance level of the studies.

Continue Reading →
  • Note

    This is my old site, preserved only to keep links from breaking. The new one is at www.jonbirge.net. Everything here is also over there, plus new stuff.
  • Blogs

    • New Site
  • Links

    • My work page at MIT
  • Tags

    757 amp apple automatic updates baby bad touch best beware Boston Clinton Clinton cockpit delegates Democrats f-sharp flightdeck google Harmon Kardon healthcare humor interesting interference investing iphone libertarians linux marketing math Microsoft MIT not funny Obama oil Photography programming race rant receiver RF Stata statistics superdelegates Vista weird Windows
  • Categories

    • Aviation
    • Economics
    • HowTo
    • Music
    • Philosophy
    • Politics
    • Random
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Technology
    • WordPress
  • Control

    • Log in
    • Entries RSS
    • Comments RSS
    • WordPress.org

Ye Olde Jonathan Birge

Pages

  • What is this mess?
  • Things to do in Boston
  • Things to do on Earth

The Latest

  • New location
    Given my departure from MIT, and the inevitable day when birge@mit.edu ceases […]

More

Thanks for dropping by! Feel free to join the discussion by leaving comments, and stay updated by subscribing to the RSS feed.
© 2011 Jonathan Birge
Platform by PageLines