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Freakonomics and Your Data

November 8, 2011 by Jay Arthur
with 449 views
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Many companies and employees are afraid of data and of doing the analytics. It doesn't have to be hard and you don't have to be good at math. [read more]

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The Human Factor Continually Confounds Probability Models

October 14, 2011 by Paul Barsch
with 92 views
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In creating “one for the record books”, the 2011 Red Sox collapse shows us that the human factor continually confounds probability models. [read more]

Business People Are Dumb On Average(s)

September 12, 2011 by Timo Elliott
with 125 views
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Photo: Richard Riley/Flickr (Creative Commons)

If you really want to improve your company’s return on investment in analytics, you may want to consider investing in more training rather than yet another technology solution. [read more]

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“Average” Statistics that Bruise Our Ears

September 7, 2011 by Paul Barsch
with 149 views
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The term “on average” denotes the usual amount of something. However, using “average” in presentations, media and more can be terribly misleading and it is up to the data driven executive to make proper (and ethical) use of this calculation [read more]

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Squealer Pig’s Persuasive (Mis)Use of Statistics

August 24, 2011 by Paul Barsch
with 237 views
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Animal Farm’s Squealer Pig was always proficient at rattling off compelling statistics on productivity, output and more. And from the lofty numbers quoted, appearances seemed quite favorable. Yet statistics can certainly be used to misrepresent reality, and that’s why the data driven executive always gives them a second and maybe third review. [read more]

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Newsflash: Correlation is Not a Cause!

July 13, 2011 by Paul Barsch
with 338 views
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Just about every data scientist and statistician knows that correlation doesn’t necessarily confirm causation. Psychologist and author Sue Blackmore says the simple reminder that “correlation is not a cause” (CINAC), would improve just about everyone’s mental toolkit. [read more]

The “decline effect,” random variation, and evidence-based marketing

January 13, 2011 by David Bakken
with 636 views
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Given that market researchers apply much of the same reasoning as scientists in deciding what’s an effect and what isn’t, the decline effect is a serious threat to creating customer knowledge and making evidence-based marketing decisions. [read more]

The language of Statistics

October 25, 2010 by David Smith
with 1,062 views
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R is the lingua franca of Statistics: R code and R packages is the means by which statisticians communicate ideas and methods for statistical analysis. The reasons why are discussed in this article, but it also begs the question: what's wrong with the spoken or written word? How Statistics and Probability relate to the English language... [read more]

Conditional probability: an easier way

April 27, 2010 by David Smith
with 111 views
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Conditional probabilities are bane of many students of Statistics, but statements of conditional probability come up surprisingly often in real life. For example, as Steven Strogatz writes in the New York Times, when doctors are asked to estimate the probability that a woman has breast cancer given a positive mammogram test result, most... [read more]

Patterns patterns everywhere

April 22, 2010 by Peter Thomas
with 1,484 views
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Introduction A lot of human scientific and technological progress over the span of recorded history has been related to discerning patterns. People noticed that the Sun and Moon both had regular periodicity to their movements, leading to models that ultimately changed our view of our place in the Universe. The apparently wandering... [read more]

The statistics of vaccines

November 4, 2009 by Stephen Baker
with 107 views
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I took my Atlantic to work with me yesterday, and did some old-fashioned analog reading, giving my iTouch a well-deserved rest. Both articles I read were dripping with statistical analysis. First, vaccines. There's a nicely done skeptical analysis of the effectiveness of vaccines in fighting the flu. Some of the statistics appear to... [read more]

The difference between Statistics and Machine Learning

September 30, 2009 by David Smith
with 98 views
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I get my daily R fortune by following Rfortunes on Twitter. This one came up the other day:To paraphrase provocatively, 'machine learning is statistics minus any checking of models and assumptions'. Brian D. Ripley.In a similar vein, back in December Brendan O'Connor remarked upon Rob Tibshirani's comparison of machine learning and... [read more]

Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian Talks Stats 101

August 14, 2009 by Daniel Tunkelang
with 120 views
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In an interview with CNET’s Tom Krazit, Google Chief Economist Hal Varian made a nice argument regarding the relative advantages of scale to a search engine:On this data issue, people keep talking about how more data gives you a bigger advantage. But when you look at data, there’s a small statistical point that the accuracy with which... [read more]

Learning SPSS for SAS users

March 1, 2009 by AjayOhri
with 150 views
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I wrote a post on learning SAS for SPSS users based on the chapter from Little SAS Book authors. Here is a comment on that which could be of great technical use for people wanting to use the very nice menu driven SPSS.SPSS has a book, Programming and Data Management for SPSS Statistics 17.0: A Guide for SPSS Statistics and SAS Users... [read more]