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Normal Deviate
Personal blog · normaldeviate.wordpress.comdatamathai
Normal Deviate is a personal blog at normaldeviate.wordpress.com about data, math and ai. Since 2012, 26 different Hacker News readers have linked it 37 times, most often “What Is Bayesian/Frequentist Inference? (2012)”. The last post was in 2013, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Statistics blog by Larry Wasserman, a CMU statistics professor, covering frequentist versus Bayesian debates, p-values, Simpson's paradox, causation versus association, and the Higgs analysis.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Thoughts on Statistics and Machine Learning
Most-linked posts?
- What Is Bayesian/Frequentist Inference? (2012)3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2012-11-18
- Computatational Learning Theory is a re-discovery of confidence intervals2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-06
- Simpson's paradox explained2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-06-23
What Hacker News says?
I'm glad you're being open minded about responses. While I completely agree with you on the massive backlog of problems that could be solved with very simple data analysis (this is the reason I am in the field), your thoughts about data modeling techniques are very much off the mark and sound like something read from a dated statistics textbook. First, on logistic regression: -I can tell you with certainty that logi…
Comment linking /2012/06/21/90/
on “Rosetta: ESA’s ‘sleeping beauty’ wakes up from deep space hibernation”Submitted What Is Bayesian/Frequentist Inference? (2012) as a story · 74 points
HN discussionSort of. You don't need identical replications of the same experiment, just long run probabilities for any application of the method. See example two here: https://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/what-is-bayes... (The author is a stats professor at CMU.) Quoting: "The plot shows the first 50 simulations. In the first simulation I picked some distribution {F_1}. Let {\theta_1} be the median of {F_1}. I generat…
Comment linking /2012/11/17/what-is-bayesianfrequentist-inference/
on “Measurement of the W boson mass reveals 7σ deviation from calculations”Submitted What Is Bayesian/Frequentist Inference? as a story · 67 points
HN discussionIt is important to note that this is a study of people who happened to be stronger, not people who were randomly caused to be stronger (ie by randomly assigning workout routines). Larry Wassermann has a great write up on the distinction with regards to inferring causation vs association here: http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/48/ It is good that they attempted to control for things like cardiovascular fi…
Comment linking /2012/06/18/48/
on “Association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008) [pdf]”Submitted Statistics Declares War on Machine Learning as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSimpson's Paradox is scary if you've not seen it before, but you should not stop here and instead proceed immediately on to omitted variable bias and the conversation here ( http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/simpsons-parad... ). In short, Simpson's paradox occurs because probability distributions and causal claims are distinct things which behave differently. It's nothing more than a particular, insidiou…
Comment linking /2013/06/20/simpsons-paradox-explained/
on “Simpson's Paradox”Submitted What Every Statistician Should Know About Computer Science (and Vice-Versa) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIf you want to read up on ayasdi go straight to the Source: http://www.ayasdi.com/resources/ (click on publications) There are probably some talks by Gunnar Carlsson around on the web too. There is also a great overview from Larry Wassermann on his outstanding blog: http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/topological-da... Other examples of manifold inspired math in data analysis that I find more useful as the…
Comment linking /2012/07/01/topological-data-analysis/
on “Scientific Data Has Become So Complex, We Have to Invent New Math”- ot · 2016-05-24
Submitted Statistics versus Machine Learning as a story · 4 points
HN discussion Bayesian methods have a lot going for them, but you need some way of checking whether the methods are giving sensible answers. Andrew Gelman (well know professor, blogger, and author of Bayesian Data Analysis) relies on simulation, which is a pretty Frequentist thing to do! Bayesian and Frequentist methods are not nearly as at odds as posts like this suggest. Frequentism is mostly about how methods should be evaluat…
Comment linking /2012/11/17/what-is-bayesianfrequentist-inference/
on “It is time to stop teaching frequentism to non-statisticians (2012)”Submitted Data Science: The End of Statistics? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIf you want to know: do Higgs Bosons exist, you can go frequentist or bayesian: Wasserman: p-value is fine for Higgs experiment: https://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/the-higgs-bos... Tom Campbell-Ricketts: Bayes is better even for Higgs experiment https://maximum-entropy-blog.blogspot.com/2012/07/higgs-boso... My take: frequentist p-value is simpler but Bayes is what you really want.
Comment linking /2012/07/11/the-higgs-boson-and-the-p-value-police/
on “Not Frequentist Enough”Submitted The value of adding randomness in statistics as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSee these blog posts: http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/is-bayesian-in... http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/aaronson-colt-... The first is discussing whether people treat Bayesian stats as a religion. The second includes a quote from someone in the frequentist religion (you can tell because they make a jibe about the "Bayesian religion"). So there are people on both sides, thankfully dwindlin…
Comment linking /2013/05/05/aaronson-colt-bayesians-and-frequentists/
on “A Fervent Defense of Frequentist Statistics”Submitted Data Science: the end of Statistics? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionFanboy. I have read half of E.T. Jaynes' Probability Theory: the Logic of Science so far. I have read the link you speak of. I have already responded here: http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/what-is-bayesi... I don't think my LessWrong link confuses Bayes' Rule with Bayesian statistics. Why do you think Eliezer responded 1/2 to the brain teaser? He does not say it, but I'm pretty sure he just assumed that…
Comment linking /2012/11/17/what-is-bayesianfrequentist-inference/
on “How to share data with a statistician”Submitted Topological Data Analysis (2012) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionJust out of curiosity, what kinds of statistical problems do you tend to solve, or are you just a fanboy? I saw you posted a link to something on lesswrong, which is confusing an application of Bayes Rule with Bayesian statistics. Maybe you should read what an actual statistician has to say on the matter: http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/what-is-bayesi... instead of a Harry Potter fanfic author.
Comment linking /2012/11/17/what-is-bayesianfrequentist-inference/
on “How to share data with a statistician”Submitted Data Science: The End of Statistics? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionp-values must be the most mis-interpreted statistic in the history of statistics. As an example of the trouble you can get into with p-values see recent discussion over misreporting of the LHC experiments (a good starting point is http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/07/11/the-higgs-boso... ). Every time I see p-values reported in A/B tests I get leery -- people are trying to adopt a scientific mindset but the to…
Comment linking /2012/07/11/the-higgs-boson-and-the-p-value-police/
on “How to Hang Yourself with Statistics”Submitted What is Bayesian/Frequentist inference? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPet peeve: Conditioning on a non-random variable doesn't make sense (i.e. P(data | H_0))[1]. [1] http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/double-misunde...
Comment linking /2013/03/14/double-misunderstandings-about-p-values/
on “Introduction to Bayesian Methods”Submitted Simpson’s Paradox Explained (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Assumption-Free High-Dimensional Inference as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Simpson's paradox explained as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Steve Marron on “Big Data” as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted New Names for Statistical Methods as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted An academic statistician's view on Nate Silver and betting one's predictions as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Is Bayesian/Frequentist Inference? as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
