Tag Archives: math

Searching for Answers

Need to find something out, just Google it. Now that Google is a verb as well as a noun, it’s easy. But … It Hasn’t Always Been Easy Adults under 30, Millennials, grew up with smartphones, laptop and tablet computers, … Continue reading

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What Type of Data Scientist are You?

Read any popular business magazine and you’re sure to find an article about how data science is the wave of the future. Since 2011, after fifty years of wandering through the halls of academia, real world employment of data scientists … 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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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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The Seeds of a Model

Perhaps the most complicated and time-consuming aspect of model building is selecting the components of your model—the variables, the samples, and the data (https://statswithcats.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/many-paths-lead-to-models/). Here are a few tips for collecting the seeds of your model. Models Revisited Here’s a … Continue reading

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Fifty Ways to Fix your Data

Fifty Ways to Fix your Data (Sing to the tune of “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon) The problem is all about your scales, she said to me The R-squares will be better if you’ve matched ’em … Continue reading

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Time Is On My Side

If you do much data analysis it won’t be long before you work with data measured over a range of times. When you do see time-series data, you’ll find that time scales and time units have some very quirky properties. … Continue reading

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The Zen of Modeling

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word model? The plastic model airplanes you used to build? A fashion model? The model of the car you drive? The person who is your role model? But what … Continue reading

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It’s All Greek

When Humpty Dumpty uses a word, it means just what he chooses it to mean, neither more nor less. To people not conversant in a technical specialty, it seems that all the experts are Humpty Dumptys. Statistics is no exception. … Continue reading

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Weapons of Math Production

In theory, if you have the free time, you can calculate any statistic you might need using nothing more than a pencil and paper. After all, it’s just matrix mathematics. With a lot of data or a complicated procedure, though, … Continue reading

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