@allendowney@fosstodon.org
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allendowney

@allendowney@fosstodon.org

Curriculum designer at Brilliant, professor emeritus at Olin College, author of Think Python, blauthor of Probably Overthinking It, and stark raving Bayesian.

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allendowney, to random
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What better way to spend Friday afternoon than watching me talk about Chapter 7 of Probably Overthinking It?

"Causation, Collision, and Confusion"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rUm46mk0Yo

allendowney, to random
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Another installment of Data Q&A: Is it OK to compute the mean of a variable on a Likert scale?

Yes and no.

https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2024/05/03/the-mean-of-a-likert-scale/

Next week I'll discuss the correct pronunciation of Likert.

allendowney, to random
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I was at Google today to give a talk about Chapter 7 of Probably Overthinking It: Causation, Collision, and Confusion.

I'll post the video when it's available, but in the meantime, the slides are here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vT3Wb80roqlKxQTQQlug4cRTKIZ304S453OehgE7Xpomed2OdG1xQEDGUo6el5Wfkrhfzl8Dbb79rxe/pub

allendowney, to random
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This week's installment of Data Q&A is about testing differences in the 85th percentile

https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2024/04/28/testing-percentiles/

Different models yield different p-values, but that's ok -- they don't have to be precise

allendowney, to random
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The latest installment in the Data Q&A series is about estimating percentiles, the limits of bootstrapping, and quantifying uncertainty due to missing data.

https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2024/04/26/small-percentiles-and-missing-data/

allendowney,
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@avehtari Good question -- I'm not sure. Some of the reduction in ESS is because we're estimating such a small percentile, I think. But yes, there's a ton of structure in the data that the bootstrap is ignoring. Hmm...

allendowney,
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@avehtari I was thinking about this on my morning run and I have a new theory -- the reduced ESS is a consequence of using KDE. Any values more than a few bandwidths away from the estimate contribute nothing.

Still not sure how much better we would do with a model that takes into account the autocorrelation. Might have to do the experiment.

allendowney,
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@avehtari Thanks for looking into this! There are a couple of things I'm finding confusing here. One is that the CI you got is substantially wider than the one I got. Why is that?

allendowney,
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@avehtari The other is what you said about the tails -- I expected the Gaussian tail of the KDE kernel to match the tail of the data pretty well -- and this figure suggests that it does:

allendowney,
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@avehtari A Pareto tail would be much thicker, wouldn't it?

allendowney,
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@avehtari Hmm. I think the number of things not making sense to me has exceeded the number of things that can be cleared up in this medium :(

allendowney,
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@avehtari Ok, but doesn't the figure in my previous message indicate that the Gaussian tail of the KDE fits the data well over the range of the data? If the values below that range are a little smaller or a lot smaller, that would not affect 0.2 percentile.

allendowney, to random
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Which plot indicates a stronger relationship?

Discussion here:
https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2024/04/21/what-does-strength-mean/

allendowney,
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@mistersql Right, they are based on the same sequence of random numbers, but transformed differently. One has higher correlation, the other has higher slope -- so we have to figure out what we mean by "strength".

allendowney,
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@Biff_Bruise Glad to hear it is useful. The response to the Data Q&A series has been very positive -- and it is really fun to work on!

allendowney, to random
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Here's this week's installment in a new series, Data Q&A: Answering the real questions with Python.

"Is taking the SD of a count variable helpful?"

https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2024/04/13/standard-deviation-of-a-count/

allendowney, to random
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Here's the first in a series of blog posts where I use Python (and Jupyter notebooks) to answer questions from Reddit's statistics forum.

"Can you calculate a standard error for harmonic mean?"

Yes!

https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2024/04/09/data-qa/

allendowney, to random
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Since Colab is running PyMC version 5 now, I've updated the MCMC chapter in Think Bayes.

Links to the new (and old) chapters are here: https://allendowney.github.io/ThinkBayes2/

dave_decker, to random
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First (real) blog post: a review of @allendowney ‘s new book, Probably Overthinking It.

https://dfd.github.io/probably-overthinking-it/

allendowney,
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@dave_decker Thanks, Dave!

allendowney, to random
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Think Python updates:

I just posted new chapters at https://allendowney.github.io/ThinkPython

It is available now for pre-order from Bookshop.org, which supports local bookstores
https://bookshop.org/a/98697/9781098155438

And we're on schedule to ship mid-June!

WetHat, to jupyter
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Think Python, 3rd edition

The book is now entirely in notebooks, so you can read the text, run the code, and work on the exercises, all in one place.

Starting in February 2024, @allendowney plans to release new chapters, about one per week.

https://allendowney.github.io/ThinkPython/

allendowney,
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@WetHat And we have a new cover!

allendowney,
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@ericjmorey @WetHat That should be fixed now. Thanks for letting me know!

_wurli, to random
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When an package is deprecated or superseded in favour of another one, should maintainers add a field to the DESCRIPTION file to indicate the now preferred package?

One benefit might be that tools like {pak} could alert you if you directly install a superseded package...

allendowney,
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@_wurli I appreciate it SO much when a deprecation message tells me what to do -- as specifically as possible!

labarba, to random
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I've updated my lesson "Linear Regression with Real Data" for my Engineering Computations course, using the data for global earth temperature anomaly updated to 2023—and adding a final challenge: plot!

http://go.gwu.edu/engcomp1lesson5

allendowney,
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@labarba Really excellent!

evacide, to random
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I don't understand the people who told me I would get more conservative with age. The more powerful I become, the more angry I get at the people who abuse their power and the more aware I become of the ways in which systemic oppression functions.

allendowney,
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@Wikisteff @evanwolf @CosmicTraveler @evacide

For for details, see Chapter 12 of Probably Overthinking It https://greenteapress.com/wp/probably-overthinking-it/

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