I took the time to look at several pages of his blog and enjoyed reading them. I can see why you enjoy reading his Blog.

I did notice that my background in statistics is different than Briggs’. Statistics can be broken into two categories one is enumerative and the other analytic. Enumerative looks at some of the data and makes predictions about the data not looked at. Analytic statistics looks at data and attempts to make a rational prediction about future data. Briggs’ comes from the enumerative or classical stat’s world; I’m from the analytical world. Most college trained statisticians are enumerative and not analytical, although this is starting to change. If you look at the work of Walter Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming; two statisticians of the 1900’s you will see how and why the differentiation was made. Over the course of five years I had the opportunity to learn from Deming and other top statisticians of the time.

The only reason I mention it is because if you look at the Maunder Minimum using the enumerative approach you end up saying that it either didn’t happen or include it into your data set causing it to widen your confidence limits. The analytic approach that I’ve been taught says that something different happened, so look for what was different at that time.

Jim