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.
Kaiser Fung, founder of Principal Analytics Prep and founding director of Applied Analytics at Columbia, calls for reform in the digital advertising industry to address concerns about measurability and accountability
Kaiser Fung, founder of Principal Analytics Prep, and former director of Applied Analytics at Columbia University, explains why you can't run proper A/B tests on Facebook
Scott Pruitt, the EPA chief, continues to make innumerate comments about his personal views on climate change science. His chief accusation - chanted often - is that we need more "precision". In his view, achieving 100% precision is necessary because it removes all uncertainty, allowing lawmakers to take action. This post is inspired by his latest interview in which he is encouraging a TV debate event to air out the…
Here is a recent article giving some history on the invention of ramp meters, used on highways to mitigate congestion. I discuss this subject in Numbers Rule Your World (link). There is an interesting stochastic phenomenon underlying highway congestion. Ramp meters help by regulating the inflow of vehicles onto the highway, and prolonging the period of time by which the highway runs at full capacity. The key insight is that…
Most of my friends with families fret over school quality when deciding where to buy their homes. It's well known that good school districts are also associated with expensive houses. A feedback cycle is at work here: home prices surge where there are good schools; only richer people can afford to buy such homes; wealth brings other advantages, and so the schools tend to have better students, which leads to…
In his latest provocation, the EPA Chief, Scott Pruitt, aborted an on-going process by his agency to ban a widely-used but potentially harmful pesticide known as chlorpyrifos (link to New York Times article). In my previous blog on his climate-change statement, I pointed out that people who attack data-driven conclusions for its "imprecision" will ignore any uncertainty if they want something to happen: However, when it comes to such decisions…
Just leaving this quote from ASA President Jessica Utts here (Source: Amstat News Dec 2016): A few days ago, I was in Vietnam and took a four-hour bus ride from Ha Long Bay to Hanoi. When I arrived, my fitness tracker had given me credit for taking 9,124 steps and climbing 81 flights of stairs during those four hours, even though I only left my seat once during a short…
For me, 2016 is a year of water leaks. I was forced to move apartments during the summer. (Blame my old landlord for the lower frequency of posts this year!) That old apartment was overrun by water issues. In the past four years, there were two big leaks in addition to annual visible "seepage" in the ceiling. The first big leak ruined my first night back from Hurricane Sandy-induced evacuation.…
