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Confidence intervals

August 24, 2020 By editor

Statistical confidence intervals are almost always misinterpreted. Consider the following statement.

"The prevalence of the disease P has a 95% confidence interval of 1% <= P <= 5%."

This is commonly taken to imply that there’s a 95% chance that the true prevalence is between 1% and 5%.

This isn’t the case.

Confidence intervals represent uncertainty about the interval, rather than the parameter of interest.

The correct interpretation of the confidence interval defined above is that if we collect many samples from the population and calculate confidence intervals from them, 95% of those confidence intervals will contain the true value of P.

In Bayesian statistics we generally calculate credible intervals which are compatible with the intuitive interpretation.

Filed Under: Data science Tagged With: confidence intervals, statistics

When Spreadsheets Attack!

May 7, 2020 By editor

Stand-up comedian Matt Parker talks about when "spreadsheets hit the fan".

Filed Under: General Tagged With: spreadsheets

Decision Machines

April 11, 2020 By editor

A recent article on the Harvard Business School’s Digital Initiative blog argues that we need to move beyond prediction to create "decision machines".

It is decisions, not predictions, that have consequences.

I couldn’t agree more. However, I’m not sure that the current focus on statistical machine learning is going to lead us there.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: AI, decision-making, decisions, machine learning

COVID-19 modelling

April 6, 2020 By editor

Imperial College have published their COVID-19 modelling code on GitHub. Their modelling has apparently been used in forming UK policy.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: COVID-19, python, R, Stan

Simulations of disease spread

March 15, 2020 By editor

The Washington Post has some simple visual simulations that show how strategies such as quarantining and social distancing can impact the spread of an infectious disease.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: COVID-19

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