Category: stats

  • Not a contribution to science

    Not a contribution to science

    Null hypotheses of no difference are usually known to be false before the data are collected … when they are, their rejection or acceptance simply reflects the size of the sample and the power of the test, and is not a contribution to science Savage 1957 cited by Nelder 1999 “From Statistics to Statistical Science”. […]

  • The data may not contain the answer

    The data may not contain the answer

    The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data. John W Tukey in Sunset Salvo. 1986. The American Statistician 40(1): 72-76.

  • Flotsam 15: inference

    Flotsam 15: inference

    Before I lose the link—as I’m deleting toots & tweets two weeks after I post the—I should save the address for “Introduction to Modern Causal Inference” by Alejandro Schuler and Mark van der Laan. It is a book draft that looks quite readable. Also love Xanthe Tynehorne, Esq.’s Compendium of Curious Words. Weird enough to […]

  • Implementing a model as an R package

    Implementing a model as an R package

    In our research group we often have people creating statistical models that end up in publications but, most of the time, the practical implementation of those models is lacking. I mean, we have a bunch of barely functioning code that is very difficult to use in a reliable way in operations of the breeding programs. […]

  • Being data curious: the strange case of lamb consumption in NZ

    Being data curious: the strange case of lamb consumption in NZ

    There is a lot of talk about the skills needed for working in Statistics/Data Science, with the discussion often focusing on theoretical understanding, programming languages, exploratory data analysis, and visualization. There are many good blog posts dealing with how you get data, process it with your favorite language and then creating some good-looking plots. However, […]