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Statistics By Jim
Personal blog · statisticsbyjim.comdatasciencemath
Statistics By Jim is a personal blog at statisticsbyjim.com about data, science and math. Since 2019, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times, most often “What Is P Hacking: Methods and Best Practices”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this site as a plain-language statistics reference, for pages on hypothesis testing, sample size and power, p-hacking, the central limit theorem, trimmed means and hazard ratios.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I help you intuitively understand statistics by emphasizing concepts and using plain English so you can focus on understanding your results.
Most-linked posts?
- What Is P Hacking: Methods and Best Practices3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-12-18
- The Monty Hall Problem: A Statistical Illusion2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-12-21
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-30
What Hacker News says?
Not true. A strong effect can be meaningful for small n. This is well known from power analysis: https://statisticsbyjim.com/hypothesis-testing/sample-size-p... I also think middlebrow dismissals are discouraged on HN: http://www.byrnehobart.com/blog/why-are-middlebrow-dismissal...
Comment linking /hypothesis-testing/sample-size-power-analysis/
on “Experimental depression treatment is nearly 80% effective in controlled study”Submitted The Monty Hall Problem: A Statistical Illusion as a story · 30 points
HN discussionThank you ! Most people never understand this aspect of statistics. Living in Houston, and having survived 3 out of 4 years with an above-100-year floods, I understand firsthand the clumping of events. But the "typical" guy on the street (oops, now I just violated my own rule!) has no clue what a distribution is. Not sure how to solve this problem. Teaching statistics to everyone in not a solution (see the Monty Hal…
Comment linking /fun/monty-hall-problem/
on “Global warming has begun to make Norway warmer and wetter”Submitted What Is P Hacking: Methods and Best Practices as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis is a pretty standard measure called the Trimmed Mean: https://statisticsbyjim.com/basics/trimmed-mean/
Comment linking /basics/trimmed-mean/
on “The One Billion Row Challenge”Submitted Ghost Hunting with a Statistics Mindset as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI don't know anything about mission statements, valuations, IPOs, or yoga. I do know a little about regression, though, and that regression line is pure bullshit. (Ironic, considering what they're purporting to analyze.) The downward trend is mostly due to a single high leverage[1] outlier[2] in the upper left. Take that out, and you still have a datset that not only exhibits heteroskedasticity[3] (much higher varia…
Comment linking /regression/heteroscedasticity-regression/
on “Yogababble”Submitted Non-Parametric Tests vs. Parametric Tests as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis site is not as ground-up or comprehensive as Susan Rigetti's page, but I have found it useful: https://statisticsbyjim.com/
Comment linking /
on “The Mysterious Disappearance of a Revolutionary Mathematician”Submitted Estimating a Good Sample Size for Your Study Using Power Analysis as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://statisticsbyjim.com/hypothesis-testing/p-hacking/
Comment linking /hypothesis-testing/p-hacking/
on “Chinese archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road”To add to this, check out the Central Limit Theorem [0]. [0] - https://statisticsbyjim.com/basics/central-limit-theorem/
Comment linking /basics/central-limit-theorem/
on “Seven out of 10 Europeans believe their country takes in too many immigrants”But there is zero reason why the definition of peer review for hasn't immediately been extended to include: - accessing and verifying the datasets (in some tamper-proof mechanism that has an audit trail). Ditto the code. This would have detected the Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely alleged frauds, and many others. It's much easier in domains like behavioral psychology where the dataset size is spreadsheets << 1Mb inste…
Comment linking /hypothesis-testing/p-hacking/
on “Word2Vec Received 'Strong Reject' Four Times at ICLR2013”https://www.johndcook.com/blog/ https://statisticsbyjim.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Interesting mathematics blogs?”The study: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2... mentions that the Hazad Ratio is reduced: "Adjusted for demographics and comorbidities, recent influenza vaccination significantly reduced the hazard of stroke (hazard ratio 0·775 [95% CI 0·757–0·793])." I had to look up what a Hazard Ratio is: https://statisticsbyjim.com/probability/hazard-ratio/ So many improvements seem to be quite meagre,…
Comment linking /probability/hazard-ratio/
on “Flu vaccine lowers risk of stroke”
