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A Time Series Apologia

I would like to share a new article on some of the methods and pitfalls of time series forecasting: “A Time Series Apologia”. In it I work the seemingly simple problem of forecasting a noisy copy of sin(t). The purpose of the article is to demonstrate using ARIMA methods, and […]

How Much Data Do You Need?

Introduction A common question in analytics, statistics, and data science projects is: how much data do you need? This question actually has very specific and clear answers! A first good answer is “it is good to have a lot.” Let’s dig deeper and get some additional more detailed quantitative answers. […]

Thinking About Linear Regression

Introduction I want to spend some time thinking out loud about linear regression. As a data science consultant and teacher I spend a lot of time using linear regression and teaching linear regression. I have found each of these pursuits can degenerate into mere doctrine or instructions. “do this,” “expect […]

“Statistics to English Translation”

The core of our “statistics to English translation” series is Nina Zumel’s sequence of articles: “I don’t think that means what you think it means;” Statistics to English Translation, Part 1: Accuracy Measures Statistics to English Translation, Part 2a: ’Significant’ Doesn’t Always Mean ’Important’ Statistics to English Translation, Part 2b: […]

On The Decomposition of Variance

I am conducting another machine learning / AI bootcamp this week. Starting one of these always makes me want to get more statistical commentaries down, just in case I need one. These classes have to move fast, and also move correctly. In this case I want to write about decomposition […]

Why Do We Plot Predictions on the x-axis?

When studying regression models, One of the first diagnostic plots most students learn is to plot residuals versus the model’s predictions (that is, with the predictions on the x-axis). Here’s a basic example. # build an “ideal” linear process. set.seed(34524) N = 100 x1 = runif(N) x2 = runif(N) noise […]