Probability and statistics blog

Recently mathematician Terence Tao posted some ruminations on how to visualize the different values a random variable could take. He created some basic animated loops that cycled through some samples from the distribution, and proposed a way to represent conditionality as well. I liked the idea so much I’ve added it to my probability distributions […]

I happened to be travelling through Brussels, so I stopped by Ghent, the world hotspot for research into imprecise probabilities, and setup an interview with Gert de Cooman. Gert has been working in imprecise probabilities for more than twenty years, is a founding member and former President of SIPTA, the Society for Imprecise Probability: Theories […]

For a JavaScript-based project I’m working on, I need to be able to sample from a variety of probability distributions. There are ways to call R from JavaScript, but they depend on the server running R. I can’t depend on that. I need a pure JS solution. I found a handful of JS libraries that […]

I’m looking to put together a small crew to take on a large arbitrage project. The (rough) model for this would be “Hong Kong Syndicate” which took on the horse betting market. To be involved you have to be willing to make a large commitment in terms of time or money (I plan to contribute both). […]

“So let’s start with the fact that the study had only 100 people, which isn’t nearly enough to be able to make any determinations like this. That’s very small power. Secondly, it was already split into two groups, and the two groups by the way have absolutely zero scientific basis. There is no theory that […]

Pinned, entropy augmented, digitally normal distribution, of no particular work-related use and thus perfectly suitable for today. Code in R: iters = 1000 sd = 2 precision = 20 results = rep(0,iters) for(i in 1:iters) { x = floor(rnorm(20,5,sd) %% 10) results[i] = paste(c('.',x),sep="",collapse="") } results = as.numeric(results) plot(density(results,bw=.01),col="blue",lwd=3,bty="n")

If you are on the job market, Tal Galili from R bloggers has compiled 3 new R jobs for seekers like you. Text mining is currently a live issue in data analysis. Enoromus text data resourses on the Internet made it an important component of Big Data world. If text mining is something that you […]

Right now I’m working on a project that involves new ways to view units of content and the relationships between them. I’ve posted the comic I worked on, it has a number of stats references throughout. This is early alpha stages for the software, you may run into issues. To see the relationships, go to […]

I’ve produced a pilot episode of a “Probability Podcast”. Please have a listen and let me know if you’d be interested in hearing more episodes. Thanks! The different approaches of Fermat and Pascal Pascal’s solution, which may have come first (we don’t have all of the letters between Pascal and Fermat, and the order of […]

This week, we recommend two books on machine learning to our readers: Machine Learning with R by Brett Lantz (reviewed by Alvaro “Blag” Tejada Galindo), and An Introduction to Statistical Learning  with Applications in R by Gareth James, Daniela Witten, Trevor Hastie and Robert Tibshirani (a pdf version of this book is available on Gareth […]

Mixed effect models are useful tools in statistics because they can capture both fixed effects and random effects. Jared Knowles, a PhD student at University of Wisconsin Madison, created a tutorial with real world examples that explains how to run mixed models in R. Revolution Analytics compiles a list of industry news on R and […]

Tableau has become a star in the Business Intelligence/Analytics world for its data visualizations. Yet, you can get even more out of Tableau if you integrate it with R. If you also use SQL, here is a tutorial for you on SQL, R and text analysis. Bad breaks, then flatlines. Good holds steady. Andrew Gelman […]

In 2011, Audrey Tobias refused to provide Statistics Canada with a filled out copy of her census form, as mandated by law. Her decision, and her decision to stand by that decision, led to a trial in which the 89-year-old faced jail time. Although Tobias stated that her act was protest against the use of […]

Spreadsheets are user friendly, but they can also be dangerous. Patrick Burns explains why you should avoid spreadsheets and work with R instead. How’s your fantasy team doing? Revolution Analytics compiles a series of Fantasy Football modelling articles by Boris Chen of New York Times. Rexer Analytics has been conducting regular polls of data miners […]

The R is my friend blog publishes a series of four articles on neural networks. This is probably one of the most comprehensive introductions to neural networks in R. If you are in love with neural nets and want to learn even more, here is another tutorial by Saptarsi Goswami. State-by-state media preferences as revealed […]

The picture above is a very well-known mathematical construction called the fractal cat. Brian Lee Yung Rowe shows how to construct fractal artworks using R. Arthur Charpentier of Freakonometrics explains how to construct ROC (rate of change Receiver Operating Characteristic) curves in R, as well as how to interpret and plot them. This is a […]

Larry Wasserman, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is a graduate of University of Toronto, a COPSS Award winner, and a leading statistician in Bayesian analysis and inference. In this post, he discusses his views on the question Is Bayesian Inference a Religion? Two people will each spend 15 consecutive minutes in a bar between 12:00pm […]

Data science is emerging as a new, hot field, but is it really different from statistics? Wesley from statistical-research.com discusses why data science is more than just a title. Are you in the market research industry? If you ever run into incomplete data, here is how machine learning can help to fill in the gaps. […]

Thinking of starting a new business? Rodolfo Vanzini guides R users through the process of integrating Google maps with your own demographic data. Suppose you have n students each holding some number of eggs. There are two large baskets at the front of the room, one red and one blue. With some probability that varies […]

Randomness – Probability = Chance Chance – Randomness = Fate Fate + God = Predestination Probability + Epistemology = Types of Randomness Subjective Probability = Betting + Coherence Propensity theory = Probability + Animism Kolmogorov Axioms = Probability – randomness – chance Probability + Complexity = Cryptography Chaos + Ignorance = Randomness Regression: Data = […]