Author Archives: statswithcats

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About statswithcats

Charlie Kufs has been crunching numbers for over forty years. He retired in 2019 and is currently working on Stats with Kittens, for people interested in statistics who have not yet taken Stats 101, and the second edition of Stats with Cats, for people who have taken Stats 101 and want to use statistics at work or in their life.

Predict the Next President of the United States

The American Statistical Association is sponsoring a new statistics contest for high school and college students. The contest, known as Prediction 2016, challenges students to use statistics to predict the next president of the U.S. The purpose of the contest … Continue reading

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Regression Fantasies

Common Reasons for Doubting a Regression Model Finding a model that fits a set of data is one of the most common goals in data analysis. Least squares regression is the most commonly used tool for achieving this goal. It’s … Continue reading

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How to Write Data Analysis Reports in Six Easy Lessons

In every data analysis, putting the analysis and the results into a comprehensible report is the final, and for some, the biggest hurdle. The goal of a technical report is to communicate information. However, the technical information is difficult to … Continue reading

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Ten Ways Statistical Models Can Break Your Heart

Models are beautiful. The ways their features are combined sets them apart from each other.  Each has its own personality, sometimes pleasant, sometimes not, and often not what you would expect. Here are ten ways your love affair with statistical … Continue reading

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Looking for Insight through a Window

At a press briefing on February 12, 2002, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld addressed the absence of evidence linking the government of Iraq with weapons of mass destruction: There are known knowns. There are things we know that we … Continue reading

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It’s Hard to be a Data-Driven Organization

Why is it so Hard? Do you work for a data-driven organization, or one that claims to be a data-driven organization, or one that wants to be a data-driven organization? You probably do, whether you work for a big retailer … Continue reading

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Share Your Career with Students

I got a special request from my daughter in Hawaii that I hope you will read. Aloha. I teach 5th grade special education in a resource room setting. My students are currently researching careers they are interested in as part … Continue reading

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How to Tell if Correlation Implies Causation

You’ve probably heard the admonition: Correlation Does Not Imply Causation. Everyone agrees that correlation is not the same as causation. However, those two words — correlation and causation — have generated quite a bit of discussion. Why Causality Matters No … Continue reading

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2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 83,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at … Continue reading

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