Kaiser Fung, author of Numbers Rule Your World and founder of Principal Analytics Prep, discusses why naive analysis of data hurts the debate over affirmative action.
Kaiser Fung, author of Numbers Rule Your World and founder of Principal Analytics Prep, discusses why naive analysis of data hurts the debate over affirmative action.
In our latest Statbusters column for the Daily Beast, we read the research behind the claim that "standing reduces odds of obesity". Especially at younger companies, it is trendy to work at standing desks because of findings like this. We find a variety of statistical issues calling for better studies. For example, the observational dataset used provides no clue as to whether sitting causes obesity or obesity leads to more…
Ben Alamar reflects on the rise of data analytics in the NBA (link). I like this passage very much, which really nails home the point that good analytics requires intuition: The hours of waiting [during draft meetings] were often filled with watching film of prospects. It helped me refine my analysis, as I soaked up details from scouts that I never would have seen on my own. ("Rewind that. ...…
Consider this paragraph from a FiveThirtyEight article about the small-schools movement (my italics): Hanushek calculated the economic value of good and bad teachers, combining the “quality” of a teacher — based on student achievement on tests — with the lifetime earnings of an average American entering the workforce. He found that a very high-performing teacher with a class of 20 students could raise her pupils’ average lifetime earnings by as…
This is part 3 of my response to Gelman's post about the DST/heart attacks study. The previous parts are here and here. One of the keys of vetting any Big Data/OCCAM study is taking note of the decisions made by the researchers in conducting the analysis. Most of these decisions involve subjective adjustments or unverifiable assumptions. Not that either of those things are inherently bad - indeed, any analysis one…
As others binge watch Netflix TV, I binge read Gelman posts, while riding a train with no wifi and a dying laptop battery. (This entry was written two weeks ago.) Andrew Gelman is statistics’ most prolific blogger. Gelman-binging has become a necessity since I have not managed to keep up with his accelerated posting schedule. Earlier this year, he began publishing previews of future posts, one week in advance, and…
To add to my prior post, having now read the published paper on the effect of DST on heart attacks, I can confirm that I disagree with the way the publicist hired by the journal messaged the research conclusion. And some of the fault lies with the researchers themselves who appear to have encouraged the exaggerated claim. Here is the summary of the research as written up by the researchers…
Andrew Gelman discusses a paper and blog post by Ian Ayres on the Freakonomics blog. Their main result is summarized as: We find that a ten percentage-point increase in state-level female sports participation generates a five to six percentage-point rise in the rate of female secularism, a five percentage-point increase in the proportion of women who are mothers, and a six percentage-point rise in the proportion of mothers who, at…
Reader Daniel T. is unhappy about this analysis of the intraday Internet usage by OS and device types. He doesn't like their choice of index, which I'll get to in a second post. (Link appears here when ready.) There is something else wrong with this type of analysis. Let's do a thought experiment. If you are a marketer interested in the diurnal variability in Internet usage, what are some of…
Yesterday, Larry Cahoon, a 29-year veteran at the Census Bureau, answered some questions. The rest of the interview is printed below. *** KF: How can a data analyst improve his or her skills? LC: I have to say my best training has been many, many hours of just playing with statistics, playing with graphics, and reading the analysis others have done. The more data I see, the more analysis I…
