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.

Becoming Part of the Group

Imagine looking for patterns in a scatter plot of two variables. You see no linear trends, no curvilinear trends, and no cyclic or sinusoidal trends. Does that mean there are no associations between the variables? Maybe not. Most people think … Continue reading

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The Data Dozen

Data can take a variety of forms. Some are readily amenable to statistical analysis and some are better suited to other methods of analysis. When you’re trying to solve some problem or research question, though, you need to use whatever … Continue reading

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Statistics: a Remedy for Football Withdrawal

One thing that makes sports so much fun to follow is the plethora of statistics associated with every player, every game, every team, and every season. Other than government agencies, you won’t find better sources of data to practice on. … Continue reading

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Six Misconceptions about Statistics You May Get From Stats 101

When you learn new things, you can develop misconceptions. Maybe it’s the result of something you didn’t understand correctly. Maybe it’s the way the instructor explains something. Or maybe, it’s something unspoken, something you assume or infer from what was … Continue reading

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Consumer Guide to Statistics 101

Whether you took or are taking an introductory course on statistics, you probably didn’t get to choose from a dozen candidate offerings. You had to take the specific course required for your major. You can, though, evaluate what you got. … Continue reading

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Dealing with Dilemmas

A decade or so ago, I always feared and was the frequent victim of hardware and software problems. It was a logical consequence of a craftsman routinely pushing his tools way beyond the limits of their capabilities. But the software … Continue reading

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Limits of Confusion

A confidence interval is the numerical interval around the mean of a sample from a population that has a certain confidence of including the mean of the entire population. “Say what?” OK, let’s take it one point at a time. … Continue reading

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A Picture Worth 140,000 Words

Even if it’s been a while since your last statistics class, when you read Stats with Cats: The Domesticated Guide to Statistics, Models, Graphs, and Other Breeds of Data Analysis you’ll figure out that there’s much more to data analysis … Continue reading

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Ockham’s Spatula

Model building is like climbing a mountain. It’s what you spend so much time planning for. It’s what everybody wants to talk about. It’s what gives you that euphoric feeling of accomplishment when you’re finished. But just as mountain climbers … Continue reading

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Grasping at Flaws

Even if you’re not a statistician, you may one day find yourself in the position of reviewing a statistical analysis that was done by someone else. It may be an associate, someone who works for you, or even a competitor. … Continue reading

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