From Statistics Hacks … Hack #7: Measure Up. Two revelations for me today. First, this book has already been a big help. The big bugaboo for me with my previous quantitative research was the Why of the What. I got plenty of advice on what buttons in SPSS I was supposed to click, but not [...]
Why pitchers don’t matter
OK, I’m no sabermetrician in the number-crunching sense, but I do get a kick out of the insights that can come out of advanced math in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. I was doing a search early this morning for records on minor league errors — which, oddly enough, is [...]
Stats Hacks #6
Another bit of wisdom from Statistics Hacks to share … Hack #6: Measure Precisely. The results of any experimental test are likely to be criticized first in two areas. Is the test reliable, and is it valid. This means that not only should it be able to be replicated again and again with similar results, [...]
Wacky Wiki News
Some choice fun-making at wikipedia’s expense: Watch Stephen Colbert‘s recent The Word segment on “wikiality” … and then check out the Wikipedia entries on The Colbert Report and page on elephants (or the accompanying discussion). NOTE: If the YouTube link doesn’t fly, This may lead to a Windows-version offered by the show. And then there [...]
Stats Hacks #5
More from Statistics Hacks … Hack #5: Go Big to Get Small. Accuracy is the big bugaboo with statistics. We can crunch numbers and manipulate (er, massage) data to get interesting results, but the proof is in the pudding. And since the whole point of statistics in the first place is to avoid experimentation on [...]
Freakonomics
There’s nothing like a 7-hour travel day to catch up on reading. I managed to crack open and finish Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Levitt is a lauded young economist from the University of Chicago who likes to use his statistical superpowers to answer interesting questions. Dubner is a New York Times journalist [...]
Stats Hacks #4
Playing a little catch-up here … Hack #4 is: Reject the Null. Scientific method is all about taking guesses and then finding ways to prove them in the real world, through experimentation. Sometimes, though, it is just as effective to prove that a guess is wrong as it is to prove that it is right. [...]