Don't trust statistics too much
Posted on October 29, 2017
Introduction There’s a famous scene in the HBO show “The Wire” where the unscrupulous Deputy Commissioner Rawls is addressing the police colonels and majors, and he says: Gentlemen, the word from on high is that the felony rates district by district will decline by five percent before the end of...
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Tags:
Statistics, Lying, Probability, p-value, Misuse, Trust
R and R^2, the relationship between correlation and the coefficient of determination.
Posted on June 25, 2017
There are 2 closely related quantities in statistics - correlation (often referred to as ) and the coefficient of determination (often referred to as ). Today we’ll explore the nature of the relationship between and , go over some common use cases for each statistic and address some misconceptions. Correlation...
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Tags:
Correlation, R, R2, R^2, Coefficient of Determination, Regression, Performance
Understanding Neural Networks with Layerwise Relevance Propagation and Deep Taylor Series
Posted on April 16, 2017
Deep neural networks are some of the most powerful learning algorithms that have ever been developed. Unfortunately, they are also some of the most complex. The hierarchical non-linear transformations that neural networks apply to data can be nearly impossible to understand. This problem is exacerbated by the non-determinism of neural...
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Tags:
Tensorflow, Layerwise, Relevance, Propagation, Deep, Taylor, Series, Visualization
Exploring Assumptions with Monty Hall and Blue Eyed Islanders
Posted on February 12, 2017
Let’s talk about making assumptions. Each time you form an opinion on something, you don’t re-examine each of the beliefs that contributed to that opinion. For example, when you order food at a restaurant, you pick the foods that you think will taste good. You don’t spend hours questioning the...
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Tags:
Math, Probability, Paradox, Monty Hall, Blue Eyed Islanders
An Introduction to Algebraic Groups for CS People
Posted on January 2, 2017
One of my favorite classes in college was Abstract Algebra. It was my first non-CS non-elementary math class, and I took it because I knew I didn’t want to graduate without having broadened my mathematical horizons beyond CS. As it turned out, Abstract Algebra felt pretty familiar. Many of the...
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Tags:
Abstract, Algebra, CS, Theory, Group, Programming