The Skeptical Zone » Probability and statistics

How, when and where does drift happen? I don’t know much about the Kahn Academy but their Wikipedia entry suggests they don’t have any political or religious axe to grind. Here is their descr...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/genetic-drift-for-dummies/

David Nemati and Eric Holloway, “Expected Algorithmic Specified Complexity.” Bio-Complexity 2019 (2):1-10. doi:10.5048/BIO-C.2019.2. Editor: William Basener. Editor-in-Chief: Robert J. Marks...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/stark-incompetence/

For The Panda’s Thumb’s After the Bar Closes thread on Uncommon Descent, I created a graph of the number of unique commentators at UD: Here, for each day from Apr 2005 until Nov 2019, I gave ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/number-of-unique-commentators/

This past Friday, I bumped into Dr. Michael Behe, and again on Saturday, along with Drs. Brian Miller (DI), Research Coordinator CSC, and Robert Larmer (UNB), currently President of the Canadian ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/behe-and-co-in-canada/

TSZ member Eric Holloway is the latest rising star of the “Intelligent Design” movement. Such a meteoric rise is bound to attract attention and it has indeed caught the eye of veteran biologi...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/paging-dr-holloway/

Probabilistic thinking is pervasive in evolutionary theory. It’s not a bad thing, just something that needs to be acknowledged and appropriately handled. Denial Some go so far as to deny it, bu...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/evolution-and-probability/

At Uncommon Descent, poster gpuccio has expressed interest in what I think of his example of a safecracker trying to open a safe with a 150-digit combination, or open 150 safes, each with its own...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/does-gpuccios-150-safe-thief-example-validate-the-500-bits-rule/

Just a note that I have put up a new post at Panda’s Thumb in response to a post by Eric Holloway at the Discovery Institute’s new blog Mind Matters. Holloway declares that critics have total...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/eric-holloway-needs-our-help-new-post-at-pandas-thumb/

I am hoping that some members here are familiar with Bayes’ Theorem and willing to share their knowledge or at the very least interested enough in the topic to do some research and share their ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/abusing-bayes/

Defending the validity and significance of the new theorem “Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection With Mutations, Part II: Our Mutation-Selection Model – Bill Basener and John Sanford Joe ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/defending-the-validity-and-significance-of-the-new-theorem-fundamental-theorem-of-natural-selection-with-mutations-part-i-fishers-impact-2/

– Bill Basener and John Sanford   Joe Felsenstein and Michael Lynch (JF and ML) wrote a blog post, “Does Basener and Sanford’s model of mutation vs selection show that deleterious mutation...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/defending-the-validity-and-significance-of-the-new-theorem-fundamental-theorem-of-natural-selection-with-mutations-part-i-fishers-impact/

Darwin’s conforming of his theory to the old vera causa ideal shows that the theory of natural selection is probabilistic not because it introduces a probabilistic law or principle, but because...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/chance-and-selection/

Evolution is often presented as problem-solving. Genetic algorithms are often offered as proofs of evolution’s ability to solve problems. Genetic algorithms are as search algorithms. As one boo...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/a-problem-to-solve/

There’s been some debate here at TSZ recently about probability and the interpretation of probability. I took some flak (my personal subjective opinion) for attempting to distinguish between ca...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/determining-probability/

Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, by Robert J. Marks II, the “Charles Darwin of Intelligent Design”; William A. Dembski, the “Isaac Newton of Information Theory”; and Winston E...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/introduction-to-evolutionary-informatics/

The Sensuous Curmudgeon, who presently cannot post to his weblog, comments: This Discoveroid article is amazing. Could Atheism Survive the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?. I wish I could make...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/two-planets-with-life-are-more-miraculous-than-one/

Here, one of my brilliant MD PhD students and I study one of the “information” arguments against evolution. What do you think of our study? I recently put this preprint in biorxiv. To be clea...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/evolution-and-functional-information/

Given the importance of information theory to some intelligent design arguments I thought it might be nice to have a toolkit of some basic functions related to the sorts of calculations associate...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/dice-entropy-a-programming-challenge/

The writings and life work of Ed Thorp, professor at MIT, influenced many of my notions of ID (though Thorp and Shannon are not ID proponents). I happened upon a forgotten mathematical paper by E...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/thorp-shannon-inspiration-for-alternative-perspectives-on-the-id-vs-naturalism-debate/

Mung has drawn our attention to a post by Kirk Durston at ENV. This is my initial reaction to his method to establish the likelihood of generating a protein with AA permease (amino acid membrane ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/how-not-to-sample-protein-space/

TSZ has made much ado about P(T|H), a conditional probability based on a materialistic hypothesis. They don’t seem to realize that H pertains to their position and that H cannot be had means th...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/the-real-elepthant-in-the-room/

Richard Dawkins’s computer simulation algorithm explores how long it takes a 28-letter-long phrase to evolve to become the phrase “Methinks it is like a weasel”. The Weasel program has a si...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wright-fisher-and-the-weasel/

Michael Behe is best known for coining the phrase Irreducible Complexity, but I think his likening of biological systems to Rube Goldberg machines is a better way to frame the problem of evolving...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/philosophy-and-complexity-of-rube-goldberg-machines/

A century later we know that the overwhelming obstacle facing spontaneous generation is probability, or rather improbability, resulting from life’s enormously complex phenotypes. If even a sing...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/spontaneous-generation/

A short comparison between the activities at "Uncommon Descent" and "The Skeptical Zone" in 2015, based on comments and posts. Continue reading →

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/uncommon-descent-and-the-skeptical-zone-in-2015/

As an ID proponent and creationist, the irony is that at the time in my life where I have the greatest level of faith in ID and creation, it is also the time in my life at some level I … Contin...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/the-reasonableness-of-atheism-and-black-swans/

On the left is a photograph of a real snowflake.  Most people would agree that it was not created intentionally, except possibly in the rather esoteric sense of being the foreseen result of the ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/intention-intelligence-and-teleology/

A couple recent comments here at TSZ by Patrick caught my eye. First was the claim that arguments for the existence of God had been refuted. I don’t agree that heaping a bunch of poor and refut...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/those-weasely-idcists/

I see long-time commenter at Uncommon Descent, Mung, in a thread entitled Backwards eye wiring? Lee Spetner comments, asks: How do you calculate the size of amino acid sequence space? As this se...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/how-to-calculate-amino-acid-sequence-space/

Barry seems to have noticed TSZ again, and so I will take this opportunity of inviting him over here, where he can post freely, and will not be banned unless he posts porn or malware or outs some...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/answer-to-barry-part-1/

At UD I noticed, while I was checking the Moran-Arrington score, I couldn’t help noticing a news item entitled, provocatively (for me) Psychology does not speak the language of statistics very ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/more-statistical-confusion/

There’s been a skirmish between Larry Moran and Barry Arrington about whether Barry understands the Theory of Evolution, and the latest salvo is a piece at UD, entitled, Can a Lowly Lawyer Make...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/lawyers-and-scientists/

Journal club time: paper by Sanford et al: The Waiting Time Problem in a Model Hominin Population.  I’ve pasted the abstract below. Have at it guys 🙂 Background Functional information is no...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/mendels-accountant-again/

Over my time as a dilettante observer of the science blogging community, I have noticed a certain frisson of controversy over the idea of random genetic drift. Sewall Wright, who with Ronald Fish...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/random-genetic-drift-a-controversy/

…Gap Highlighter, Design Conjecture Though I’ve continued to endear myself to the YEC community, I’ve certainly made myself odious in certain ID circles. I’ve often been the lone ID propo...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/csi-free-explanatory-filter-gap-highlighter-design-conjecture/

At Uncommon Descent, William Dembski’s and Robert Marks’s coauthor Winston Ewert has made a post conceding that using Complex Specified Information to conclude that evolution of an adaptation...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/circularity-of-using-csi-to-conclude-design/

An odd post by “news” at UD raises yet again the issue of Fisherian p values – and reveals yet again that many ID proponents don’t understand them. She (I assume it is Denyse) writes: Fur...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/ronald-fisher-and-william-dembski/

asks Winston Ewert at UD.  For those of us who can’t post there, this thread is for us to respond here.  Winston himself is as ever, cordially invited to join us, as are any UD commenters. Wh...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/where-do-we-get-the-probabilities/

Allan Miller’s post Randomness and evolution deals with neutral drift in the Moran model applied to a bag of M&Ms. Much of the discussion has focused on the question of counting generations i...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/counting-generations-of-mms/

Lizzie Allan Miller said: Here’s a simple experiment one can actually try. Take a bag of M&M’s, and without peeking reach in and grab one. Eat it. Then grab another and return it to the bag ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/randomness-and-evolution-an-interactive-toy/

What is it with ID proponents and gambling?  Or rather, what is it that makes people who play p0ker and roulette think that that gives them a relevant background for statistical hypothesis testi...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/darwins-backwards/

Here’s a simple experiment one can actually try. Take a bag of M&M’s, and without peeking reach in and grab one. Eat it. Then grab another and return it to the bag with another one, from a se...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/randomness-and-evolution/

If yes, in what sense? If no, do you think that evolutionists claim that it is? If yes, why do you think this? If no, what the heck are we arguing about?

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/id-proponents-is-chance-a-cause/

Is the trajectory here “due to chance”?

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/chance/

Sal Cordova responded to my OP at UD, and I have given his post in full below. Dr. Liddle recently used my name specifically in a question here: Chance and 500 coins: a challenge Barry? Sal? Will...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/lizzie-asked-me-a-question-so-i-will-respond/

I’m going to demonstrate this using Bayes’ Rule. I will represent the hypothesis that (a non-Deist, i.e. an interventionist) God exists as , and the evidence of complex life as .  What we wa...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/proof-why-naturalist-science-can-be-no-threat-to-religious-faith/

My problem with the IDists’ 500 coins question (if you saw 500 coins lying heads up, would you reject the hypothesis that they were fair coins, and had been fairly tossed?)  is not that there ...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/chance-and-500-coins/

Upright Biped: For what it’s worth… Dr Liddle has described her conception of chance as all outcomes being equiprobable, and has most assuredly used “chance” as an explanation of that out...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/chance-yet-again-from-ud-comments/

Here.   The null hypothesis in a drug trial is not that the drug is efficacious. The null hypothesis is that the difference between the groups is due to chance. No, Barry.  Check any stats text...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/barry-gets-it-wrong-again/

Over at The Skeptical Zone Elizabeth Liddle has weighed in on the “coins on the table” issue I raised in this post. Readers will remember the simple question I asked: If you came across a �...

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/yes-lizzie-chance-is-very-often-an-explanation/