Questions tagged [communication]
Related to communication or explanation of statistical data, analyses, or concepts
47 questions
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How to verbalise t test results
I'm reading up on statistics and yesterday I asked the question why the two different t tests give different results.
statmerkur gave the following answer
There is no contradiction. The rejection ...
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A Short Video to Explain Causal Inference to Non-Technical Audiences
I thought this question might be too much like a shopping question so I initially asked in Ten Fold, but it was suggested that I ask here. Here is my original question:
Anyone have suggestions on ...
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How does source and channel coding work without cancelling out?
Source coding is basically compressing raw message bits. Channel coding is adding redundancy. Both are counter to one another. Yet, in a digital communication block diagram, they are always next to ...
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How to report the standard error of a percentage?
I have a variable that is a proportion. Let's say it is the proportion of boys in a classroom. I calculate its standard error as well. Suppose the value and its standard error is $0.1512$, and $0.0341$...
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Translate feature_importances_ to nontechnical stakeholders
Lets say nontechnical C-suite wants you to predict what the revenue would be for a certain customer base. And so you train a random forest model and it achieves high accuracy. You want to figure out ...
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Reporting multinomial regression results to a non-stat audience
I would appreciate a little bit of advice on reporting. I've run a set of multinomial regression models, done my model testing, all that good stuff. Now I am waffling on how I want to report the ...
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Good references on communicating the results of a statistical analysis to laypeople or non-expert stakeholders?
I was wondering if there were some good references on communicating the results of data/statistical analysis to stakeholders or laypeople.
I'm not looking necessarily for references related to data ...
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Who created the "soup analogy" for sampling
The soup analogy is,
You only need a single spoon to sample the soup, provided it is well stirred.
It has been used several times here Sampling distributions of sample means and What is your ...
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What is the non-asymptotic counterpart of the mutual information?
The mutual information of a joint probability distribution $p(x,y)$ tells us, if we send $n$-letter messages with each letter drawn from the marginal distribution $p_X(x)$, that we can use roughly $2^{...
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How would you justify to a non-statistician why we should use an unbiased estimator instead of a maximum likelihood estimator?
Say we have the maximum likelihood estimator (which is usually biased) and an unbiased estimator and the sample size is small enough that these estimator are substantially different in magnitude. We'...
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LGBM Intuition to Non-technical individuals
How can i explain LGBM to a non-technical person as it involves Trees/Ensembling and much more?
Using LGBM for solving a Regression problem and how does it helps in:
Better Prediction
Feature ...
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Uncovering which frequencies two systems are communicating on by observing reoccurring time correlated signals and their frequencies
Suppose you have a set of communication systems {A, B, C, D}, which speak with each other as well as other systems not contained in the set. Our concern is how they speak with each other. They ...
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Communicating resource increase or decrease in a normalized way
Consider I have a system where I am reducing the amount of a certain resource $R$ required to get the same result. If the old system uses $r_1$ $R$ and the new system uses $r_2$ $R$, I can say we have ...
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How to explain intuitively to a lay audience that the sample variance is an unbiased estimator?
I have data for the concentration of several chemicals in the milk of 10000 cows and have to explain to policymakers and the lay public (i.e. people with no or limited knowledge of statistics) that ...
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Empirical Implications of Unbiased Estimators
I am familiar with the layperson explanation of an unbiased estimator as follows: if we repeat an experiment under identical conditions many times, the average value of the estimate will be close to ...
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Presenting result of bivariate regression to general public
We have a simple unvariate linear model of woodpecker abundance vs elevation:
woodpeckers ~ elevation
The model reports significantly positive slope for elevation. ...
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Explaining conditioning number in statistics to non-statisticians
I work these days as a statistician and a lot of what I do is evaluating design of experiments; I started this job less than a year ago, after getting a PhD in mathematical statistics. I remember once ...
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How to best explain prediction vs uncertainty in the case of probabilities
In my mind, (I think) I understand the difference between prediction and uncertainty about that prediction. The prediction comes from a model (say a LPM or a Probit) and the uncertainty is related to ...
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511
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Choosing to keep or bin continuous variables for communicating regression results
I am using logistic regression in a work setting (e.g. subscription conversion in a technology product). I would like to communicate about what independent variables a team should focus on to increase ...
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Should you introduce new notation for every regression?
I am currently writing an empirical paper which reports on the results from estimating a number of regression models.
Question: is it standard to introduce new notation for each of these models, or ...
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Debunking wrong CLT statement
The central limit theorem (CLT) gives some nice properties about converging to a normal distribution. Prior to studying statistics formally, I was under the extremely wrong impression that the CLT ...
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What are some techniques for communicating data distributions to unsophisticated users?
In my scenario, students are grouped into classes and each student has a performance metric. I want to be able to show teachers and principals a list of classes, along with an aggregate performance ...
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Comment on the change in p-value following adjustment for confounders
The Second Australian National Blood Pressure Study (ANBP2) was a prospective, randomised, open-labelled, blinded to endpoint (PROBE) trial of Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE) inhibitors versus ...
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Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard': how did they do this?
This message in a Reuter's article from 25.02.2019 is currently all over the news:
Evidence for man-made global warming hits 'gold standard'
[Scientists] said confidence that human activities ...
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Visual Aids for Explaining Statistical Significance to a Jury?
This question How would you explain statistical significance to people with no statistical background? provides some good ideas for explaining statistical significance to a lay audience in a limited ...
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Discussing R-squared of log-log model with a non-technical audience
I have been asked to report on the relationship between two right-skew financial variables using R-squared e.g. "market cap explain ?% of the variance in CEO compensation". The purpose of the ...
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Can a random forest model be extracted for practical use?
I'm new to random forest models and have questions.
When I develop a linear model, I can tell people "Hey kids- here's how to predict the circumference of a circle if you know the radius. Just plug ...
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Changing the size of a confidence interval in order to emphasize results
I've been asked to perform a statistical analysis at my work and report on the results. I'm using a 2-sided t-test comparing 2 groups where H0=0 and Ha≠0 at a significance level of .05. For my results ...
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How does one explain what an unbiased estimator is to a layperson?
Suppose $\hat{\theta}$ is an unbiased estimator for $\theta$. Then of course, $\mathbb{E}[\hat{\theta} \mid \theta] = \theta$.
How does one explain this to a layperson? In the past, what I have said ...
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Is the margin of error for a survey a "fake" statistic?
When I conduct a survey for a client, they are often very concerned about the margin of error for the survey, and that’s totally reasonable. Oftentimes however, when they say, “We want a margin of ...
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How to justify a "complicated" regression model over a simpler model to a non-technical audience?
I find myself in the position of advocating for a linear mixed-effects model to estimate a trend to a non-technical audience. The subject of the regression model is a somewhat contentious topic and my ...
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Find the input/output probability distributions that realize the capacity of communications channel?
Consider two random variables $X,Y$. For simplicity, they are discrete and finite. Let $Q(y|x)$ be the conditional probability of $Y$ given $X$. Their mutual information is defined as:
$$I=H(Y)-H(Y|X)...
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What significant problems/solutions have you experienced working with software engineers? [closed]
This question is probably at least applicable for those of you that work in a commercial setting.
I am working in a rather general way on process improvements with regards to communicating (or not ...
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Visualization for longitudinal lab tests
I'm trying to meaningfully display longitudinal changes in lab test results to a lay (not necessarily stats literate) audience.
I currently show scatterplots with bands to indicate normal vs ...
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Beautifully written papers
From David Salsburg's book The lady tasting tea:
Although the reader may not believe it, literary style plays an
important role in mathematical research. Some mathematical writers
seem unable to ...
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How would you explain statistical significance to people with no statistical background?
Background:
I had to perform a data analysis for a client (some kind of lawyer) who was an absolute beginner in statistics. He asked me what the term "statistical significance" means and I really ...
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Average partial effects
I need to explain what average partial effects (APEs) are to a very general non-statistical audience (i.e. the APEs derived from a probit model). I have tried to define APEs using layman's terms but I ...
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How to communicate regression model performance to non-stats people?
In R I created a gradient boosted random forest from 100,000 records with 10 cross validation folds using the gbm library. I want to communicate the strength and ...
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How would you explain logit coefficients to someone with no statistical background
Similar question here.
The question I highlighted above provides an overview of how generalized linear models work. However, I find people often want more and ask about how the coefficients were ...
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Are there any good popular science book about statistics or machine learning?
There a bunch of really good popular science books around, that deal with real science, as well as the history and reasons behind current theories, while remaining extremely enjoyable to read. For ...
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How would you explain generalized linear models to people with no statistical background?
I always have a hard time explaining statistical techniques to audience with no statistical background. If I wanted to explain what GLM is to such audience (without throwing out statistical jargon), ...
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How best to communicate uncertainty?
A massive problem in communicating the results of statistical calculations to the media and to the public is how we communicate uncertainty. Certainly most mass media seems to like a hard and fast ...
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Explaining to laypeople why bootstrapping works
I recently used bootstrapping to estimate confidence intervals for a project. Someone who doesn't know much about statistics recently asked me to explain why bootstrapping works, i.e., why is it that ...
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How to help people understand "...per 100,000"?
It's well known that members of the public have difficulty comprehending numbers over a certain size. A common tricky issue for people communicating demographic trends is helping people make sense of ...
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Most confusing statistical terms
We statisticians use many words in ways that are slightly different from the way everyone else uses them. This cause lots of problems when we teach or explain what we are doing. I'll start a list (...
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What is a good tool and format for representing and communicating the design content of a survey?
Are there any decent tools for writing/designing questionnaires before providing to programmers? Currently Microsoft Word is being used and tracking changes and keeping it standardized has become a ...
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What is your favorite layman's explanation for a difficult statistical concept?
I really enjoy hearing simple explanations to complex problems. What is your favorite analogy or anecdote that explains a difficult statistical concept?
My favorite is Murray's explanation of ...