Posted inStatistics
Please Don’t Smooth Your (Social Media) Data!
Don't Don't smooth your data and then use that smoothed data as input to other analysis. You will fool yourself. You will make over-confident decisions. It is the wrong thing…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Explanation Vs Prediction
Introduction There isn't as much space between explanation and prediction as you'd think; both are had from the same elements of the problem at hand. Here's how it all works.…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Sampling Variability Is A Screwy, Misleading Concept
https://twitter.com/Bigdatanalysis/status/573739862924353536 Because of travel and jet lag, exacerbated by "springing forward", we continue our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles next week. If you can't read the tweet above, it says…
Posted inStatistics
Nonpolitical Images Evoke Neural Predictors Of Political Ideology?
The study Another day, another dreary study purporting to show that the brains of "conservatives" are different than those of "liberals." This one hooked up to an electrical phrenology device…
Posted inStatistics
Natural Variations In Weather DO NOT Explain The ‘Pause’: Update, With Letter to Nature
You create a model which predicts the sun will rise in the west. The sun fails to cooperate and rises in the east. Do you: Admit failure and return your…
Posted inStatistics
A Wandering Mind Is An Unhappy Mind?
The gentleman who runs Shadow To Light asked me to take a look at a paper which Sam Harris approvingly quoted. The 2010 peer-reviewed one-page paper shares today's title (sans…
Posted inStatistics
What Regression Really Is: Part I
This is the start of a series of reference articles which explain analytical techniques, with a focus on the philosophy, understanding, common mistakes, and not mathematics. Overview Regression, a.k.a. "linear…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Don’t Use Statistics Unless You Have To
We're finally getting it, as evinced by the responses to the article "Netherlands Temperature Controversy: Or, Yet Again, How Not To Do Time Series." Let's return to the Screaming Willies.…
