There is usually a desire to have the most precise measurement of any measurement. In theory, that is good, but for the purposes of data analysis, more precision isn't always better. It is usually best to examine any continuous variable and determine a reasonable precision for the recorded values.
You may be asking yourself… “Two Bayesian posts in a row? What is going on?” Though my statistical training focused on Frequentist methodologies, I am a big believer in using whatever tools help me gain insight into the statistical problem I happen to be focusing on at the moment. Frequentist
It’s no secret that JMP excels in the visual exploration of data. There’s a healthy dose of statistics, too. But when asked about Bayesian methods, JMP is probably not the first software package that comes to mind. JMP 10 does contain Bayesian D-optimal and I-optimal designs in our design of experiments (DOE) features,
Which of the following statements about our next featured guest for Analytically Speaking is NOT true? First, let me help you in revealing that we are very fortunate to be joined on April 18 by Dick De Veaux, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics, Williams College (and expert in applied statistics).
Scientists and engineers use on-line sensors and measurement devices to monitor an almost infinite array of process attributes. When analyzing time series data captured by historians and data loggers, two questions come up regularly: “How can I calculate a moving average?” and a related question: “How do I flag rows
As I looked over Monday morning’s news headlines, this story caught my eye: Wow, I thought, the Windows phone system is really catching on. But then I looked at the numbers displayed in news article: It’s true that the Windows numbers have significantly increased, from minuscule to small. But does
Gertrude Cox is indeed an influential statistician worthy of recognition in this International Year of Statistics. She was also part of my family, my maternal grandmother’s sister. I decided one day to learn more about her and spent numerous hours in the North Carolina University Library Archives where a colleague
This month, we celebrate Gertrude Mary Cox, one of the pioneers of academic statistics departments in the United States and one of the first female statisticians. She has been dubbed the "First Lady of Statistics." Her efforts were fundamental to the development of the vibrant statistics community in the Research
Today I mourn the passing of George Box, truly a giant among 20th century statisticians. Indeed, I should not relegate him to the 20th century because he won the Brumbaugh Award in 2010 and 2007 for writing papers that made in their year of publication the largest single contribution to
At a recent Building Better Models seminar, someone asked me, “If you have a factor that has a curved relationship with a response, can a decision tree model be used to model that relationship?” To show that this is indeed possible, I created a simple simulated data set with 200