In an earlier post, I focused on an in-depth visit with CHAID (Chi-square automatic interaction detection). Quoting myself, I said “As the name implies it is fundamentally based on the venerable Chi-square test – and while not the most powerful (in terms of detecting the smallest possible differences) or the fastest, ...

Presenting data results in the most informative and compelling manner is part of the role of the data scientist. It's all well and good to master the arcana of some algorithm, to manipulate and master the numbers and bend them to your will to produce a “solution” that is both ...

In yesterday’s post I focused on the task of using R to “drive” MS Excel. I deliberately ended the post with a fully functioning (pun intended) but very ugly set of code. Why “ugly”? Well, because the last set of code wound up repeating 4 lines of code 12 times!

I have until recently made it a habit to draw a clear distinction about using R for data analysis and Microsoft Excel for other office productivity tasks. I know there are people who use Excel to process data and even (gasp) to teach statistics with it. But I’m a ...

Overview This package includes functions that I find useful for teaching statistics as well as actually practicing the art. They typically are not “new” methods but rather wrappers around either base R or other packages and concepts I’m tryin...