[HN Gopher] A User's Guide to Statistical Inference and Regression
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       A User's Guide to Statistical Inference and Regression
        
       Author : sebg
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2024-07-25 19:56 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mattblackwell.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mattblackwell.github.io)
        
       | huitzitziltzin wrote:
       | Man I love this first paragraph. Love it.
       | 
       | "Quantitative analysis of social data has an alluring exactness
       | to it. It allows us to estimate the average number of minutes of
       | YouTube videos watched to the millisecond, and in doing so it
       | gives us the aura of true scientists. But the advantage of
       | quantitative analyses lies not in the ability to derive precise
       | three-decimal point estimates; rather, quantitative methods shine
       | because they allow us to communicate methodological goals,
       | assumptions, and results in a (hopefully) common, compact, and
       | precise mathematical language. It is this language that helps
       | clarify exactly what researchers are doing with their data and
       | why."
       | 
       | A lot of industry "data science" is moronic, which is to say not
       | clear about assumptions or about what is and isn't possible with
       | the estimates. Leading case: Models are treated as causal when
       | they are not. Antidotes to that kind of thinking are great.
       | Hopefully this can be one of them. I'll keep looking at it.
        
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       (page generated 2024-07-27 23:04 UTC)