No, Bacon Is Not as Bad for You as Smoking

27 October 2015

Some of you might have heard that bacon was rated as being as carcinogenic as smoking by the World Health Organization. No. That did not happen. And this is a good case for learning some modern critical thinking skills. I’ll spoil the surprise by quoting them...

Everyone Is a Bayesian

18 April 2015

Greg Mayer posted at Jerry Coyne’s blog on “Why I am not a Bayesian.” In his explanation, he goes wrong at three key points. And they are illustrative of common mistakes people make in trying to understand or apply Bayesian reasoning. In reality,...

Innumeracy: A Fault to Fix

26 November 2013

Innumeracy is more of a threat than scientific illiteracy. And I want to illustrate this today. A Problem Atheists Should Care About Ordinary literacy is not so much a problem online, since participation on the internet requires basic literacy—although of...

Now You Can Wear Even More Bayes’ Theorem!

4 October 2013

Did you say Odds Form? Shirt? Car Flag? Panties? Hell yeah. I just finished loading my old Cafe Press store with tons of different shirts and other odds and ends featuring my Bayesian graphic, which uses imaginative rather than standard mathematical notation (as I...

Two Bayesian Fallacies

23 May 2013

At INR3 in Kamloops I spoke on applying Bayesian logic to the study of Jesus along with the same principles we apply to dead religions (so as to avoid the “don’t offend the Christians” reaction to controversial claims…claims that would not be...

Understanding Bayesian History

9 October 2012

So far I know of only two critiques of my argument in Proving History that actually exhibit signs of having read the book (all other critiques can be rebutted with three words: read the book; although in all honesty, even the two critiques that engage the book can be...

Bayesian Blogging

30 August 2012

This is a request to all fans of Bayes’ Theorem out there: I’m looking for the best blogs and websites substantially devoted to discussing all things Bayesian. Of course I know about Less Wrong, the brainchild of Eliezer Yudkowsky, which often discusses...

New Bayesian Calculator

6 August 2012

Thanks to Cam Spiers (who has produced an interesting selection of free javascript Bayesian Calculators), I have updated my own Bayesian Calculator page using the most basic of those. This might be updated again in coming months. Right now it only allows running...

The Jesus Tomb and Bayes’ Theorem

29 June 2012

Finally, a mathematician actually gets the math right on the Jesus Tomb hypothesis. Conclusion? We have not found the tomb of Jesus. For those who already know the backstory and want to jump right to it, read Bayes’ Theorem and the “Jesus Family...

The Lame That Would Not Die!

22 February 2012

What is The Lame? Unfortunately no one can be told what The Lame is. You have to see it for yourself. No, just kidding. It’s the claim that “Science Requires a Christian Worldview.” JT just blogged that, responding reasonably enough to a repeat of a...

Proving History!

8 February 2012

My new book is finally done and available for pre-order at Amazon: titled Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Yes, that’s the one (or one of the two) that everyone has been asking me about. It’s been years in the...

Bayes’ Theorem: Lust for Glory!

1 December 2011

My talk at Skepticon IV on the importance of Bayes’ Theorem to skepticism is now available on YouTube (Bayes’ Theorem: Lust for Glory!). (My slides in that on the UFO case don’t show the whole text because I had to use Darrel Ray’s computer at...