I have a class C of objects. I have a sample of objects of the class. And each object O has its own sample with a number of trials NO. NO has a range of 1 to several hundred.

Each object O has a parameter PO. What I want is the variance of PO in the class C.

The true values of PO are not known. But from each object's sample, I have XO, which is ( Read more... )

So John Oliver does a great, well-deserved take-down of Donald Trump. In which, he includes reference to in indirect accusation that Trump has a small dick. (Are you really going to say you didn't understand than when watching Oliver?) Oliver says there's really nothing wrong with Trump's fingers (and indirectly his dick) but he uses the reference ( Read more... )

The Industrial Revolution never stopped. It is a rolling wave that occasionally gains a new beachhead on a distant shore, but mostly moves gradually fro where it is. People in one locale move off their subsistence farms (which are in truth inadequate for assured subsistence and survival) into the new factories, where their lives are in some ways ( Read more... )

This is from a conversation elsewhere, that started in this direction when someone objected to the notion of college education as a right (even if it's a good idea) because others would have participate by paying for it. He wanted to substitute the word "privilege" for anything that requires others' participation. It went back and forth several ( Read more... )

On the Republican side, the caucuses are good at selecting the candidate who to represent one faction of the party. The faction whose reason for being politically involved is to assuage their existential fears by attempting to impose their religion on everyone else. The faction that loses the nomination to another faction, whose reason for being in ( Read more... )

I think so long as there's a GOP House majority that depends on the Freedom Caucus, Congressional obstruction will look much as it does now, whether the President is Clinton, Sanders, Bloomberg, Kasich, or whomever. But the Sanders campaign talking point of breaking the deadlock by sweeping in a new Congress *in 2016* is at least as unrealistic as ( Read more... )

As correctly noted by people NPR interviews, it's counterproductive when the FBI monitors mosques and discussions in the mosques about terrorism. Even when tweens express sympathy for violent and/or extreme positions, it's much better for the adults to explain why that's wrong in a calm manner, safe from surveillance, so everyone is speaking ( Read more... )

"Political 'pragmatism' may require accepting 'half loaves' - but the full loaf has to be large and bold enough in the first place to make the half loaf meaningful. That’s why the movement must aim high - toward a single-payer universal health, free public higher education, and busting up the biggest banks, for example."

I wonder if Trump is too much of an egotist to realize he's better off not winning Iowa by too much, if at all. He needs Cruz to be a strong factor in the race going forward, or the winner of the Bush/Christie/Kasich/Rubio fight will surely beat him over time.

Fascism grew out of far worse political conditions than we have. With far more fear of non-fascist revolution, and so less willingness on the part of the body politic to defend the status quo ( Read more... )