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by armanboyaci 460 days ago
>Being able to apply statistics is like having a secret superpower.

I totally with this sentence. BUT If you ask for my opinion, merely knowing a list of statistical formulas is not very helpful. Most of the time, people don’t remember the underlying assumptions, so there is a fair chance they will use them in inappropriate situations.

I recommend watching these two YouTube videos. The presenters advocate using simulation/bootstrapping/shuffling methods instead of memorizing formulas.

Jake Vanderplas - Statistics for Hackers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq9DzN6mvYA

John Rauser - Statistics Without the Agonizing Pain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dnw46eC-0o
4 comments
mont_tag 460 days ago
IIRC, Jake's video inspired the example section in the Python random module docs. It takes about 15 minutes with those examples to learn how to put Jake's ideas into practice. https://docs.python.org/3/library/random.html#examples .
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Terr_ 460 days ago
> The presenters advocate using simulation/bootstrapping/shuffling methods instead of memorizing formulas.

Yeah, I often find it much easier to make a little Python script to do 10,000 monte-carlo trial, as opposed to properly" working things out and then not even being confident-enough in my result anyway.

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asdff 460 days ago
It makes no sense to memorize the formulas when most any statistical formula you'd actually use has a package or three that can run it in a way that's already probably reasonably benchmarked and not prone to you fat fingering some error rolling your own.
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dapperdrake 460 days ago
Assumptions are the part that matters.
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asdff 457 days ago
What assuming the package is correct? Sure it could be wrong in its implementation, but one could simulate expected results and compare the output of the tool if one doesn't trust that the community of data scientists nerds have somehow missed that the storied louvain package or whatever else is incorrect for years.
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wodenokoto 460 days ago
While I really liked the video by vanderplas, I did return to it after a year or two and paused every time he presented a problem and then tried to solve it using for loops and thinking hard.

I barely succeeded in any of it. So at that point just look up the formula instead of bootstrapping.

I’ll give the second one a shot too.

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