#80. New paper by Judea Pearl

A long survey of Pearl's take on statistics-based causality studies.

Judea Pearl (2009). Causal inference in statistics: an overview. Statistics Surveys 3, 96-146.

#79. Old paper by Andrew Gelman

Bayesian Analysis recently published and had discussed a short piece by Andrew Gelman in which he played the role of an `anti-Bayesian' (sic) and proposed a number of objections to Bayesian statistics.

There is something inherently wrong when a journal editor asks a statistician to adapt an April Fool's Day blog post for publication and discussion in a (nominally at least) scientific journal, then the statistician (of course) closes the discussion by taking the chance to `dismount' said objections. That can only turn out as an exercise of frivolity or a postmodern parody of a scientific discussion.

This being said, when expert people talk about something they've been thinking about for years, we mere mortals may find something to learn however lightly they gloss over the depths of the subject.

Andrew Gelman (2008). Objections to Bayesian statistics. Bayesian Analysis 3, 445-478 (with discussion by Bernardo, Kadane, Senn and Wasserman).


If you don't feel like downloading each item separately, you can download the whole issue here (3.8 Mb!) and print the parts you're interested in.


Finally, here you are a completely unrelated blog post on the Bayesian-or-Frequentist thing. Additionally, in the comments to that post there are several links which may be of interest.

#78. STMA-Z database

You can access the database STMA-Z of statistical papers here. STMA stands for `Statistical Theory and Method Abstracts' and Z (presumably) for Zentralblatt, the European equivalent of Mathematical Reviews. For each paper, you have either its abstract or its Zentralblatt review if the latter exists.

You may know that the Zentralblatt database has free online access, although only 3 results will show for each search if your institution does not have a subscription. But if you content yourself with papers having MSC codes 60 and 62 (Probability Theory and Statistics), the access via the STMA-Z website will currently give you all results without restrictions.

Presumably, access will be restricted at some unspecified point in the future.

#77. Off-topic

Here you can find a truly mindblowing, jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring gallery of Mars pictures from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Enjoy!

#76. Mathematics Subject Classification 2010

I ignore whether the 2010 revision of the MSC codes of the American Mathematical Society and the European Mathematical Society has already `officially' superseded the 2000 version. Providing MSC codes for a paper is needed when submitting to some mathematical journals, and they are also used in Mathematical Reviews.

Whether you are an author or a reviewer, you may be interested in the following new codes:

60A86 Fuzzy probability
62A86 Fuzzy analysis in statistics
62B86 Fuzziness, sufficiency, and information
62C86 Decision theory and fuzziness
62E86 Fuzziness in connection with the topics on distributions in this section [i.e. 62E Distribution theory]
62F86 Parametric inference and fuzziness
62G86 Nonparametric inference and fuzziness
62H86 Multivariate analysis and fuzziness
62J86 Fuzziness, and linear inference and regression
62K86 Fuzziness and design of experiments
62L86 Fuzziness and sequential methods
62M86 Inference from stochastic processes and fuzziness
62N86 Fuzziness, and survival analysis and censored data

As you may see, there is a whole new transversal `86' category, which is good because fuzzy + stat papers were being inaccurately labelled 99% of the time (the closest niche for a paper on fuzzy random variables was 60D05 "Geometric probability and stochastic geometry", enough said).


The MSC2010 can be found here.