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Introduction to Modern Statistics

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Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#121

Post by mb7733 »

juunpp wrote: post #77
mjburgess wrote: post #30

What's often missing from these introductions is when statistics will not work; and what it even means when it "works". The amount of data needed to tell between two normal is about 30 data points -- between two power-law distributions, >trillion. (And this basically scuppers the central limit theorem, on which a lot of cargo-cult stats is justified). Stats, imv, should be taught simulation-first: code up your hypoth…

I am a noob and I've always got stuck on comparing two independent means. Assumption: normality. Yeah, data is never normal in my bakery.

The sample means approach the normal distribution as the sample size grows, even if the underlying distributions are not normal. That's the the central limit theorem.

(Requires some very lax assumptions like finite variance on the underlying distribution)

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#122

Post by leymed »

otteromkram wrote: post #110
zvmaz wrote: post #4

What is a good book on statistics that one can use for self-learning?

No one ever mentions Concrete Mathematics (Graham, Knuth, et al), but it's a classic text for math and stats. https://pubs.aip.org/aip/cip/article-abstract/3/5/106/136800...

No it’s not. You can argue about number theory and combinatorics, but the stats/prob part of the book is very inadequate.

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#123

Post by elric »

ndr wrote: post #47
growingkittens wrote: post #46

Is there a "pre-statistics" book that teaches the thinking skills and concepts needed to understand statistics?

This book seems to start where you need it to start. You don't need much beyond basic calculus. Most suffer from some mental block they got installed at a young age akin those that say "I'm bad at math" because their teacher sucked. Dive in and you won't regret it.

Lots of people don't make it past by basic algebra, let alone basic calculus.

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#124

Post by ndr »

elric wrote: post #123
ndr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book seems to start where you need it to start. You don't need much beyond basic calculus. Most suffer from some mental block they got installed at a young age akin those that say "I'm bad at math" because their teacher sucked. Dive in and you won't regret it.

Lots of people don't make it past by basic algebra, let alone basic calculus.

Of which many that don't make it because they've had some early bad experience rather than actually being unable to. And there is a parallel for those with some basic mastery of algebra and calculus and have some mental block towards stats.

To quote pg, many conversations on the Internet:

Person 1: ∃x P(x)

Person 2: -(∀x P(x))!

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#125

Post by treszkai »

epgui wrote: post #53

As much as I appreciate and love all pedagogical endeavours in the field, especially in the form of open texts, I really, really, really dislike this overall approach to teaching introductory statistics. I'm hoping to see, over time, a shift away from ad-hoc null hypothesis testing in favour of linear models (yes, in introductory courses, from the start-- see link below) and Bayesian-by-default approaches. https://li…

I understand where you're coming from, and I like the idea for a certain kind of people: those who are very good at handling abstractions. Software engineers do have this skill, but the majority of statistics users do not. Trying to explain the similarities between these linear methods and how all is one [1] to a social scientist who doesn't like numbers nor formulas to begin with would only lead to more confusion.

But if you ever do a randomized test with a suitable linear model to estimate the efficacy of these two methods, do let us know, that would be 10/10 :)

[1]: https://lindeloev.github.io/tests-as-linear/#41_one_sample_t...

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#126

Post by willsmith72 »

LemonSodaPop wrote: post #114
willsmith72 wrote: post #70

The epub is apparently too big to send to a kindle, but I can't see the option to download it, only the pdf. Any ideas?

Too big to email? I use calibre to convert any file-type i have and send it directly to my kindle.

me too, but the epub -> pdf conversion is never perfect in my experience, with random headers through the text or weird paragraph splits.

The too big error was from openintro.com, where they have a "send to kindle" option which I was hoping was a proper epub

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#127

Post by nrclark »

growingkittens wrote: post #63
ndr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book seems to start where you need it to start. You don't need much beyond basic calculus. Most suffer from some mental block they got installed at a young age akin those that say "I'm bad at math" because their teacher sucked. Dive in and you won't regret it.

My mental block is a brain injury that went undiagnosed until I was 30. I can't really hold more than two numbers in my head at a time. I struggled through math in school because it was lecture based, and the books were written to accompany a lecture. I can learn math fairly well if I have the right written material and the right direction. However, I do not retain math skills: without active practice, I revert back…

> My mental block is a brain injury that went undiagnosed until I was 30.

Would you be OK with elaborating on this a bit more?

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#128

Post by growingkittens »

nrclark wrote: post #127
growingkittens wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mental block is a brain injury that went undiagnosed until I was 30. I can't really hold more than two numbers in my head at a time. I struggled through math in school because it was lecture based, and the books were written to accompany a lecture. I can learn math fairly well if I have the right written material and the right direction. However, I do not retain math skills: without active practice, I revert back…

> My mental block is a brain injury that went undiagnosed until I was 30. Would you be OK with elaborating on this a bit more?

Yes. What would you like to know? I am better at answering specific questions.

The injury was diagnosed via SPECT scan. Two of them: one after mental activity, one after physical relaxation. This also revealed that my brain relaxes with mental activity, and "lights up" with physical relaxation.

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#129

Post by nrclark »

growingkittens wrote: post #128
nrclark wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My mental block is a brain injury that went undiagnosed until I was 30. Would you be OK with elaborating on this a bit more?

Yes. What would you like to know? I am better at answering specific questions. The injury was diagnosed via SPECT scan. Two of them: one after mental activity, one after physical relaxation. This also revealed that my brain relaxes with mental activity, and "lights up" with physical relaxation.

do you know how/when you got the injury? What prompted you to get the scan?

Re: Introduction to Modern Statistics

#130

Post by growingkittens »

nrclark wrote: post #129
growingkittens wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. What would you like to know? I am better at answering specific questions. The injury was diagnosed via SPECT scan. Two of them: one after mental activity, one after physical relaxation. This also revealed that my brain relaxes with mental activity, and "lights up" with physical relaxation.

do you know how/when you got the injury? What prompted you to get the scan?

No, I don't know how. The clinic also took a medical history and said, based on my symptoms, it probably happened in early childhood as a baby.

I always knew there was "something" wrong with me, so I jumped at the opportunity to get a brain scan. The clinic was a little suspect in that they claimed to be able to diagnose mental health issues via the scan, but they combined the scan with more traditional evaluations.

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