Book review: Head First Statistics vs. The Manga Guide to Statistics

Post by haloux » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #4

"statistics is something of a blind spot for programmers, who tend to think of themselves as numerically proficient but often dismiss statistics as unimportant “stamp collecting” for people who can’t do “real maths”" ...I've literally never heard anything like this from any programmer (or anyone else, actually). Has anyone else heard a programmer express such an attitude towards statistics? Mostly I've heard people s…

Post by padthai » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #12

haloux wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sample population sounds skewed ;). There are _many_ intersections of statistics in computer science. Off the top of my head: data analytics processing, anything in the realm of big data, computational theory, security timing attacks, industrial computation in the natural sciences and so on.

Absolutely. I've just never heard the attitude that statistics was for people who can't do "real math", or anything similar. But, my sample population is undoubtedly skewed in some way or another.

Post by 2020-3030 » Sat, Sep 01, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #6

I wish high school would put statistics in the primary math curriculum, even over (pre) calculus. I feel a solid understanding of statistics and their occasional counter intuitive nature, and especially how to properly interpret things and significance measures would be enormously valuable to citizens of this modern information age.

Post by jkmcf » Fri, Sep 07, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #6

I wish high school would put statistics in the primary math curriculum, even over (pre) calculus. I feel a solid understanding of statistics and their occasional counter intuitive nature, and especially how to properly interpret things and significance measures would be enormously valuable to citizens of this modern information age.

Post by oliwarner » Sat, Sep 15, 2018, 10:03 AM UTC

screye wrote: post #16

oliwarner wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely a viewpoint amongst other branches of mathematics. Statistics isn't too bad, but applied statistics is viewed as a crap shoot of confounding human factors, widely practised by charlatans trying to prove their brand of science by abusing numbers.

Isn't all of machine learning, economics, industrial engineering and statistically social science a form of applied statistics ? That's a lot of fields to dismiss by simply handwaving.