I have no affiliation with Code School, but I saw that they recently offered a free course on R, which is a programming language built around statistics.
The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
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Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#12Absolutely totally true. Ignore the laws of statistics at your own peril. Knowledge of statistics is the best investment one can make with one's time. A/B testing is the tip of the iceberg - a simple practical application, which can be exploited much better with statistics. Learn about statistical distributions - Bernouilli, Binomial, Normal, Poisson and Hypergeometric at least, then Chi distribution to grasp real te…
> "Knowledge of statistics is the best investment one can make with one's time."
Do you have any numbers to back that up? ;-)
Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#13I'm fascinated by the theory of increased variability in males being caused by brain-related genes in the X chromosome. I'd highly recommend checking out pages 18 and 19.
While an interesting hypothesis, it seems unlikely: one copy of each x-chromosome is deactivated in each cell, and this is done randomly in development.
Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#14Really interesting paper but the use of comic sans on the axes labels is a turn off. Why comic sans?? Why? It's a crime against fontology.
Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#15While statistics are certainly abused an misunderstood, I don't think that small sample sizes are the worst problem. The media usually reports margins of error, and most people know small samples may not represent the population.
I think a much larger problem is in the underlying assumptions that are made. For instance, assuming that an experiment on animals can be applied to humans (sometimes it can, sometimes it can't). These can be more nuanced and much harder to detect than a simple math error.
Also, the importance of truly random sampling is not emphasized enough. Even medical researchers are guilty of using international cluster sampling to make generalizations about the population. Overlooking sources of bias like geography, culture, lifestyle differences, etc.
Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#16Excellent. Reminds me of the lecture describing that "the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function"
Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#17Absolutely totally true. Ignore the laws of statistics at your own peril. Knowledge of statistics is the best investment one can make with one's time. A/B testing is the tip of the iceberg - a simple practical application, which can be exploited much better with statistics. Learn about statistical distributions - Bernouilli, Binomial, Normal, Poisson and Hypergeometric at least, then Chi distribution to grasp real te…
If someone doesn't know much about statistics what is your recommended source to learn from?
Try Statistics for dummies I and II. That should cover the general stuff. Then find books about specific topics you want to learn about.
Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#18Absolutely totally true. Ignore the laws of statistics at your own peril. Knowledge of statistics is the best investment one can make with one's time. A/B testing is the tip of the iceberg - a simple practical application, which can be exploited much better with statistics. Learn about statistical distributions - Bernouilli, Binomial, Normal, Poisson and Hypergeometric at least, then Chi distribution to grasp real te…
If someone doesn't know much about statistics what is your recommended source to learn from?
I haven't taken it, but I've heard good things about Udacity's Statistics 101 course.
Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#19Nice exposition and examples. Some of the most subtle and surprising phenomena I've seen in looking at stochastic data have been due to sampling effects.
Re: The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]
#20Absolutely totally true. Ignore the laws of statistics at your own peril. Knowledge of statistics is the best investment one can make with one's time. A/B testing is the tip of the iceberg - a simple practical application, which can be exploited much better with statistics. Learn about statistical distributions - Bernouilli, Binomial, Normal, Poisson and Hypergeometric at least, then Chi distribution to grasp real te…
If someone doesn't know much about statistics what is your recommended source to learn from?
I love stats, but I do not consider myself a professional statistician, so maybe someone else can give you better suggestions.
I'd just say I understand the basic ideas such as DeMoivre or the Central Limit Theorem, and it helps me a lot.
First I'll assume you have a basic understanding of probabilities (odds, dices, cards, etc).
If you don't yet get probabilities, try the CK-12 books probabilities and advanced probabilities book - free on the kindle, and easy to read : http://www.amazon.com/CK-12-Probability-Statistics-Course-eb...
After that, my recommendation is to study the distributions suggested - from Bernoulli to Hypergeometric - and any source you "understand" will do.
The important thing is not the source, but to understand how these things work together, how they "articulate" - i.e. why taking a bunch of samples that follow any distribution will get you something that follow a normal law (LLN, CLT, etc) - even if the law they follow has a big hole in the middle, that'll where the mean of the normal law will be. Or under which conditions you can replace a law by another law, etc.
Then it's a good time to learn what moments do - how they shape the graphs you get. After that, you can try intervals - calculate intervals given a population parameters to see how a sample can predictably differ, then from a sample of a given size how you can estimate the population parameters.
After learning all that, to bind all this knowledge I'd suggest the free courseware on MIT 15_075 (even reading only the slides online on http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-075...)
I've recently "refreshed" my knowledge of statistics, and used the slides from 15 075 as a base. They get to the point and give a better mathematical understanding - something important to build your knowledge on a solid base after you understand how the things work together and what to go down the rabbit hole.
The course suggests the Tamhane and Dunlop book (which I haven't purchased yet but which is on my buy list) ; some other people recommended it to me for the demonstrations - I did the E(S^2n) E(S^n-1) by hand and I would love to see the proof for the Chi2 stuff, because I usually understand better after I see or do the demonstration.
Regarding Chi2, "Introduction to business statistics" has a great chapter #13, giving practical application, but I strongly suggest you understand the basics first - it's too easy to make mistakes with statistics.
Yes I don't fully trust myself with a tool as powerful as statistics - it takes a professional - but even with my limited understanding, I can see the value it provides, the warnings it gives (ie the article read like some basic logical stuff, but then I realized it wouldn't have been that obvious if I hadn't known basic statistics.)