Differential privacy (DP) is an approach to maintaining the privacy of individual records in a database, while still allowing  statistical analysis. It is now perceived as the go-to method in the data privacy area, enjoying adoption by the US Census Bureau and several major firms in industry, as well as ... [Read more...]

I take my title here from the “too clever by half” paper, “What’s Not What with Statistics” of many years ago. Or I just as appropriately could have borrowed the old Leo Breiman classic title “A Tale of Two Cultures,” comparing the statistics and computer science (CS) communities. Differential ... [Read more...]

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The June 2020 issue of JASA features a highly insightful essay by Brad Efron, dean of the world’s statisticians. The article is accompanied by commentary by a number of statistical luminaries. Important, indeed central questions are raised. I would hope JASA runs more pieces of this nature. The essay may ... [Read more...]

The June 2020 issue of JASA features a highly insightful essay by Brad Efron, dean of the world’s statisticians. The article is accompanied by commentary by a number of statistical luminaries. Important, indeed central questions are raised. I would hope JASA runs more pieces of this nature. The essay may ... [Read more...]

I’m nearing completion of writing my new book, The Art of Machine Learning: Algorithms+Data+R, to be published by the whimsically named No Starch Press. I’m making a rough, partial draft available, and welcome corrections, suggestions and comments. I’ve been considering doing such a project for ... [Read more...]

I’m nearing completion of writing my new book, The Art of Machine Learning: Algorithms+Data+R, to be published by the whimsically named No Starch Press. I’m making a rough, partial draft available, and welcome corrections, suggestions and comments. I’ve been considering doing such a project for ... [Read more...]

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In recent weeks, I’ve posted three tutorials with Clearing the Confusion titles, all in my regtools GitHub repo. Topics have been unbalanced classification data; k-fold cross validation; and scaling in PCA. Comments welcome! [Read more...]

In recent weeks, I’ve posted three tutorials with Clearing the Confusion titles, all in my regtools GitHub repo. Topics have been unbalanced classification data; k-fold cross validation; and scaling in PCA. Comments welcome! [Read more...]

As the current Editor-in-Chief of the R Journal, I must apologize for the delay in getting the July issue online, due to technical and other matters. In the meantime, though, please take a look at the many interesting articles slated for publication in this and upcoming issues. Various improvements in ... [Read more...]

My updated version of my regtools package, tools for parametric and nonparametric regression, is now on CRAN, https://cran.r-project.org/package=regtools It has a number of new functions and datasets. Type vignette(‘regtools’) for an overview. Advertisements [Read more...]

My new book, Probability and Statistics for Data Science: Math + R + Data, pub. by the CRC Press, was released on June 24! This book arose from an open-source text I wrote and have been teaching from. The open source version will still be available, though rather different from the published one. ... [Read more...]

I’m continuing to add more lessons to my free online R tutorial, 17 of them so far, adding more from time to time. Aimed specifically at nonprogrammers, though those with C or Python background should find it helpful too. Comments and suggestions welcome! Advertisements [Read more...]

For some time, I’ve planned to write up a point-by-point comparison of R and Python. I’ve done so now! Comments welcome. Advertisements [Read more...]

The prominent conference R/Finance, held annually in Chicago, had a great program yesterday and today. As I wrote following last year’s conference, the organizers were criticized for including no women in its speaker lineup. The problem was that no women had submitted papers for consideration; no input, thus ... [Read more...]

Recently a young relative mentioned that the campus R course she hoped to attend was full. What online alternatives did she have? So, I decided to start one of my own! https://github.com/matloff/fasteR  Designed for complete beginners. I now have six lessons up on the site. I ... [Read more...]

In all of my undergraduate classes, I require a term project, done in groups of 3-4 students. Though the topic is specified, it is largely open-ended, a level of “freedom” that many students are unaccustomed to. However, some adapt quite well. The topic this quarter was to choose a CRAN ... [Read more...]