Thursday, February 27, 2014

Why You Should Always Get The Bigger Pizza

When one looks at thousands of pizza prices, one can see that you almost always get a much, much better deal when you buy a bigger pizza.The math of why bigger pizzas are such a good deal is simple: A pizza is a circle, and the area of a circle increases with the square of the radius.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/26/282132576/74-476-reasons-you-should-always-get-the-bigger-pizza

Job Trends in the Analytics Market

This article presents various ways of measuring the popularity or market share of software for analytics including R, SAS, SPSS etc. It's interesting to note that analytics jobs for SPSS have not changed much over the years, while those for R have been steadily increasing. The jobs for R finally crossed over and exceeded those for SPSS toward the middle of 2012.

http://www.r-bloggers.com/job-trends-in-the-analytics-market-new-improved-now-fortified-with-c-java-matlab-python-julia-and-many-more/

Monday, February 24, 2014

Modelers' Hippocratic Oath

For those who make a living by building some kind of Analytical models... Here comes a modelers' Hippocratic Oath, from the book "The Quants"

1. I will remember that I didn't make the world, and it doesn't satisfy my equations

2. Though I will use models boldly to estimate value, I will not be overly impressed by Mathematics

3. I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so.

4. Nor will I give the people who use my model false comfort about its accuracy. Instead, I will make explicit its assumptions and oversights.

5. I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many of them beyond my comprehension

Thursday, February 20, 2014

A Delicious Analysis !!

A topic model is a type of statistical model for discovering the abstract "topics" that occur in a collection of documents. The article below discusses, use of Topic Modelling to find relevance of various ingredients, using data on recipes..

http://www.r-bloggers.com/a-delicious-analysis-aka-topic-modelling-using-recipes/

Coloured Noise

Have you ever wondered that there could be other colors to our all time favorite White Noise... like Red, Pink or Green. Read more about these coloured noises at:

http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/noise/

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Princeton vs Facebook

Whoa!!! it seems two biggies here had a tussle. When Princeton claimed rapid decline in Facebook, Facebook retorted by debunking Princeton. Enjoy reading and don't forget to take away the message that how cautious one should be while doing data analysis..

http://flowingdata.com/2014/01/24/facebook-debunks-princeton-study/

Here are some third party views on this debate:

http://www.r-bloggers.com/princeton-vs-facebook-modeling-contagion/
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/facebook-is-10-whats-next-for-the-social-network-9104592.html

Monday, February 17, 2014

Communication Skills in Academics and Research

"The first rule of writing is not to omit the thing you meant to say.” - Ralph Waldo
Here is Terry Speed, discussing the importance of communication skills in academics and research..

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Handling Dates and Times in R

Here is a small tutorial on the various ways to handle dates and times in R:
http://www.r-bloggers.com/using-dates-and-times-in-r/

Does commuting affect our well-being?

Does commuting affect our well-being? Definitely according to the Office for National Statistics!
Data analysis from the Annual Population Survey revealed that commuting has a negative impact on personal well-being with the worst effects on happiness and anxiety. Read more at:

Monday, February 10, 2014

Banknotes featuring Scientists and Mathematicians

One can find a collection of currency featuring scientists and mathematicians from all over the world at the link below:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbourj/money.htm

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Getting to The Heart of it With Monte Carlo

You only need two functions to draw a heart mathematically. Once you draw a heart, by using these two function, one can easily compute the area by using Monte-Carlo techniques. Details can be found at:

Friday, February 7, 2014

Linear Modeling and Logistic Regression with R

If you're new to the R language but keen to get started with linear modeling or logistic regression in the language, take a look at the link below. It works through a series of examples to teach by demonstration. All of the datasets used in the guide are available online, so it's easy to follow along from home.

http://www.r-bloggers.com/princetons-guide-to-linear-modeling-and-logistic-regression-with-r/

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Wolfram Personal Analytics for Facebook

Recently you might have been enjoying personal #FacebookIs10 videos.. Now it is time to take a look at the stats behind your Facebook profile with Wolfram Personal Analytics..
Right from Statistics of your posts, their weekly distribution, post lengths to word cloud, top commenters and sharers..

http://www.wolframalpha.com/facebook/

Interview with Kanti Mardia

Statistics provides a challenge somewhat akin to Sherlock Holmes’ task: how to find hidden truth in any data, from small to big.
- Kanti Mardia

Read the complete interview with Samuel S. Wilks Award winner Kanti Mardia, at:

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Amount of snow to cancel school

Following link gives an interesting visualization showing an estimated amount of snow required to close school for the day, by county. It's not simply directly proportional to the amount of snowfall as school cancellation is the result of more snow than an area is used to handling
http://flowingdata.com/2014/01/31/amount-of-snow-to-cancel-school/