Patterns and Static:
Philosophy and the Question Concerning Statistics
Computation can be automated.
Judgment cannot.
In the age of AI automation, evidence still needs an interpretation.
AI can write code and automate analyses. It is now reasonable to ask: what work remains for human statisticians and data scientists? At the heart of these disciplines lies not computation, but inference. And yet, there is no consensus about how inference ought to function.
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Patterns and Static presents statistics not as a set of methods and algorithms, but a set of competing theories of inference and justification. Readers confront foundational questions: what is inference? How should uncertainty be interpreted? Can statistics reveal causality? Conceptual clarity, rather than computation and code, is the essential human work of science.
How does philosophy inform statistical thinking and practice? Check out a preview of the first two chapters of Patterns and Static: Philosophy and the Question Concerning Statistics.
Philosophy and the Question Concerning Statistics
Book artwork by Alex Stone
“Looking for the patterns in static
They start to make sense
the longer I'm at it.”
—Death Cab for Cutie
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