All Questions

134,595 questions
467k views

Making sense of principal component analysis, eigenvectors & eigenvalues

In today's pattern recognition class my professor talked about PCA, eigenvectors & eigenvalues. I got the mathematics of it. If I'm asked to find eigenvalues etc. I'll do it correctly like a ...
464k views

How to choose the number of hidden layers and nodes in a feedforward neural network?

Is there a standard and accepted method for selecting the number of layers, and the number of nodes in each layer, in a feed-forward neural network? I'm interested in automated ways of building neural ...
244k views

What is the difference between “likelihood” and “probability”?

The wikipedia page claims that likelihood and probability are distinct concepts. In non-technical parlance, "likelihood" is usually a synonym for "probability," but in statistical usage there is a ...
139k views

The Two Cultures: statistics vs. machine learning?

Last year, I read a blog post from Brendan O'Connor entitled "Statistics vs. Machine Learning, fight!" that discussed some of the differences between the two fields. Andrew Gelman responded favorably ...
428k views

What is the difference between test set and validation set?

I found this confusing when I use the neural network toolbox in Matlab. It divided the raw data set into three parts: training set validation set test set I notice in many training or learning ...
148k views

What is the intuition behind beta distribution?

Disclaimer: I'm not a statistician but a software engineer. Most of my knowledge in statistics comes from self-education, thus I still have many gaps in understanding concepts that may seem trivial ...
181k views

Why square the difference instead of taking the absolute value in standard deviation?

In the definition of standard deviation, why do we have to square the difference from the mean to get the mean (E) and take the square root back at the end? Can't we just simply take the absolute ...
128k views

Python as a statistics workbench

Lots of people use a main tool like Excel or another spreadsheet, SPSS, Stata, or R for their statistics needs. They might turn to some specific package for very special needs, but a lot of things can ...
98k views

How to understand the drawbacks of K-means

K-means is a widely used method in cluster analysis. In my understanding, this method does NOT require ANY assumptions, i.e., give me a dataset and a pre-specified number of clusters, k, and I just ...
153k views

What is your favorite “data analysis” cartoon?

This is one of my favorites: One entry per answer. (This is in the vein of the Stack Overflow question What’s your favorite “programmer” cartoon?.) P.S. Do not hotlink the cartoon without the site's ...
177k views

Bayesian and frequentist reasoning in plain English

How would you describe in plain English the characteristics that distinguish Bayesian from Frequentist reasoning?
130k views

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 ...
173k views

Relationship between SVD and PCA. How to use SVD to perform PCA?

Principal component analysis (PCA) is usually explained via an eigen-decomposition of the covariance matrix. However, it can also be performed via singular value decomposition (SVD) of the data matrix ...
272k views

Difference between logit and probit models

What is the difference between Logit and Probit model? I'm more interested here in knowing when to use logistic regression, and when to use Probit. If there is any literature which defines it using ...
91k views

Is normality testing 'essentially useless'?

A former colleague once argued to me as follows: We usually apply normality tests to the results of processes that, under the null, generate random variables that are only asymptotically or ...
224k views

When conducting multiple regression, when should you center your predictor variables & when should you standardize them?

In some literature, I have read that a regression with multiple explanatory variables, if in different units, needed to be standardized. (Standardizing consists in subtracting the mean and dividing ...
143k views

How to understand degrees of freedom?

From Wikipedia, there are three interpretations of the degrees of freedom of a statistic: In statistics, the number of degrees of freedom is the number of values in the final calculation of a ...
126k views

414k views

What is the difference between fixed effect, random effect and mixed effect models?

In simple terms, how would you explain (perhaps with simple examples) the difference between fixed effect, random effect and mixed effect models?
156k views

How would you explain Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to a layperson?

Maybe the concept, why it's used, and an example.
438k views

What is the meaning of p values and t values in statistical tests?

After taking a statistics course and then trying to help fellow students, I noticed one subject that inspires much head-desk banging is interpreting the results of statistical hypothesis tests. It ...
810k views

How to normalize data to 0-1 range?

I am lost in normalizing, could anyone guide me please. I have a minimum and maximum values, say -23.89 and 7.54990767, respectively. If I get a value of 5.6878 how can I scale this value on a scale ...
160k views

Bagging, boosting and stacking in machine learning

What's the similarities and differences between these 3 methods: Bagging, Boosting, Stacking? Which is the best one? And why? Can you give me an example for each?
21k views

What are common statistical sins?

I'm a grad student in psychology, and as I pursue more and more independent studies in statistics, I am increasingly amazed by the inadequacy of my formal training. Both personal and second hand ...
27k views

Is $R^2$ useful or dangerous?

I was skimming through some lecture notes by Cosma Shalizi (in particular, section 2.1.1 of the second lecture), and was reminded that you can get very low $R^2$ even when you have a completely linear ...
151k views

Interpretation of R's lm() output

The help pages in R assume I know what those numbers mean, but I don't. I'm trying to really intuitively understand every number here. I will just post the output and comment on what I found out. ...
59k views

Why is Euclidean distance not a good metric in high dimensions?

I read that 'Euclidean distance is not a good distance in high dimensions'. I guess this statement has something to do with the curse of dimensionality, but what exactly? Besides, what is 'high ...
70k views

30k views

Why the sudden fascination with tensors?

I've noticed lately that a lot of people are developing tensor equivalents of many methods (tensor factorization, tensor kernels, tensors for topic modeling, etc) I'm wondering, why is the world ...
108k views

When should I use lasso vs ridge?

Say I want to estimate a large number of parameters, and I want to penalize some of them because I believe they should have little effect compared to the others. How do I decide what penalization ...
194k views

Statistics Jokes

Well, we've got favourite statistics quotes. What about statistics jokes?
65k views

Does Julia have any hope of sticking in the statistical community?

I recently read a post from R-Bloggers, that linked to this blog post from John Myles White about a new language called Julia. Julia takes advantage of a just-in-time compiler that gives it wicked ...