Category Archives: numerics

Reanalysis of business visits from deployments of a mobile phone app

Updated, 20th October 2020 This reports a reanalysis of data from the deployment of a mobile phone app, as reported in: M. Yauck, L.-P. Rivest, G. Rothman, “Capture-recapture methods for data on the activation of applications on mobile phones“, Journal … Continue reading

Posted in Bayesian computational methods, biology, capture-mark-recapture, capture-recapture, Christian Robert, count data regression, cumulants, diffusion, diffusion processes, Ecological Society of America, ecology, epidemiology, experimental science, field research, Gibbs Sampling, Internet measurement, Jean-Michel Marin, linear regression, mark-recapture, mathematics, maximum likelihood, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multilist methods, multivariate statistics, non-mechanistic modeling, non-parametric statistics, numerics, open source scientific software, Pierre-Simon Laplace, population biology, population dynamics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, R, R statistical programming language, sampling, sampling algorithms, segmented package in R, statistical ecology, statistical models, statistical regression, statistical series, statistics, stepwise approximation, stochastic algorithms, surveys, V. M. R. Muggeo | 1 Comment

Numbers, feelings, and imagination

“But numbers don’t make noises. They don’t have colours. You can’t taste them or touch them. They don’t smell of anything. They don’t have feelings. They don’t make you feel. And they make for pretty boring stories.” That’s from here, … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics, maths, numbers, numerics, oceanography | Leave a comment

Sampling: Rejection, Reservoir, and Slice

An article by Suilou Huang for catatrophe modeler AIR-WorldWide of Boston about rejection sampling in CAT modeling got me thinking about pulling together some notes about sampling algorithms of various kinds. There are, of course, books written about this subject, … Continue reading

Posted in accept-reject methods, American Statistical Association, Bayesian computational methods, catastrophe modeling, data science, diffusion processes, empirical likelihood, Gibbs Sampling, insurance, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, Mathematics and Climate Research Network, maths, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical algorithms, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, percolation theory, Python 3 programming language, R statistical programming language, Radford Neal, sampling, slice sampling, spatial statistics, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search | Leave a comment

A quick note on modeling operational risk from count data

The blog statcompute recently featured a proposal encouraging the use of ordinal models for difficult risk regressions involving count data. This is actually a second installment of a two-part post on this problem, the first dealing with flexibility in count … Continue reading

Posted in American Statistical Association, Bayesian, Bayesian computational methods, count data regression, dichotomising continuous variables, dynamic generalized linear models, Frank Harrell, Frequentist, Generalize Additive Models, generalized linear mixed models, generalized linear models, GLMMs, GLMs, John Kruschke, maximum likelihood, model comparison, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, nonlinear, numerical software, numerics, premature categorization, probit regression, statistical regression, statistics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Fast means, fast moments (originally devised 1984)

(Updated 4th December 2018.) There are many devices available for making numerical calculations fast. Modern datasets and computational problems apply stylized architectures, and use approaches to problems including special algorithms for just calculating dominant eigenvectors or using non-classical statistical mechanisms … Continue reading

Posted in image processing, mathematics, numerical algorithms, numerical software, numerics | 3 Comments

When linear systems can’t be solved by linear means

Linear systems of equations and their solution form the cornerstone of much Engineering and Science. Linear algebra is a paragon of Mathematics in the sense that its theory is what mathematicians try to emulate when they develop theory for many … Continue reading

Posted in Calculus, dynamic linear models, mathematics, maths, nloptr, numerical algorithms, numerical analysis, numerical linear algebra, numerics, SVD | Leave a comment

“All models are wrong. Some models are useful.” — George Box

(Image courtesy of the Damien Garcia.) As a statistician and quant, I’ve thought hard about that oft-cited Boxism. I’m not sure I agree. It’s not that there is such a thing as a perfect model, or correct model, whatever in … Continue reading

Posted in abstraction, American Association for the Advancement of Science, astronomy, astrophysics, mathematics, model-free forecasting, numerics, perceptions, physical materialism, physics, rationality, reason, reasonableness, science, spatial statistics, splines, statistics, the right to know, theoretical physics, time series | Leave a comment

“Holy crap – an actual book!”

Originally posted on mathbabe:
Yo, everyone! The final version of my book now exists, and I have exactly one copy! Here’s my editor, Amanda Cook, holding it yesterday when we met for beers: Here’s my son holding it: He’s offered…

Posted in American Association for the Advancement of Science, Buckminster Fuller, business, citizen science, citizenship, civilization, complex systems, confirmation bias, data science, data streams, deep recurrent neural networks, denial, economics, education, engineering, ethics, evidence, Internet, investing, life purpose, machine learning, mathematical publishing, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, moral leadership, multivariate statistics, numerical software, numerics, obfuscating data, organizational failures, politics, population biology, prediction, prediction markets, privacy, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reason, reasonableness, rhetoric, risk, Schnabel census, smart data, sociology, statistical dependence, statistics, the right to be and act stupid, the right to know, the value of financial assets, transparency, UU Humanists | Leave a comment

Bayesian blocks via PELT in R

Notice of Update I have made some changes to the Bayesian Blocks code linked from here, on 24th November 2021. Also I note the coming and going of a “BayesianBlocks” package on CRAN which contained an optinterval function also based upon … Continue reading

Posted in American Statistical Association, AMETSOC, anomaly detection, astrophysics, Cauchy distribution, changepoint detection, engineering, geophysics, multivariate statistics, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, oceanography, population biology, population dynamics, Python 3, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, R, Scargle, spatial statistics, square wave approximation, statistics, stepwise approximation, time series, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | 3 Comments

data.table

R provides a helpful data structure called the “data frame” that gives the user an intuitive way to organize, view, and access data.  Many of the functions that you would us… Source: Intro to The data.table Package

Posted in big data, data science, engineering, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, open source scientific software, R, smart data, statistics | Leave a comment

On Smart Data

One of the things I find surprising, if not astonishing, is that in the rush to embrace Big Data, a lot of learning and statistical technique has been left apparently discarded along the way. I’m hardly the first to point … Continue reading

Posted in Akaike Information Criterion, Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, big data, bigmemory package for R, changepoint detection, data science, data streams, dlm package, dynamic generalized linear models, dynamic linear models, dynamical systems, Generalize Additive Models, generalized linear models, information theoretic statistics, Kalman filter, linear algebra, logistic regression, machine learning, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, mathematics education, maths, maximum likelihood, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical analysis, numerical software, numerics, quantitative biology, quantitative ecology, rationality, reasonableness, sampling, smart data, state-space models, statistical dependence, statistics, the right to know, time series | Leave a comment

high dimension Metropolis-Hastings algorithms

If attempting to simulate from a multivariate standard normal distribution in a large dimension, when starting from the mode of the target, i.e., its mean γ, leaving the mode γis extremely unlikely, given the huge drop between the value of the density at the mode γ and at likely realisations Continue reading

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, Bayesian inversion, boosting, chance, Christian Robert, computation, ensembles, Gibbs Sampling, James Spall, Jerome Friedman, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, mathematics, maths, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, multivariate statistics, numerical software, numerics, optimization, reasonableness, Robert Schapire, SPSA, state-space models, statistics, stochastic algorithms, stochastic search, stochastics, Yoav Freund | Leave a comment

R and “big data”

On 2nd November 2015, Wes McKinney, the developer of the highly useful Python pandas module (and other things, including books), wrote an amusing blog post, “The problem with the data science language wars“. I by no means disagree with him. … Continue reading

Posted in Bayes, Bayesian, big data, bigmemory package for R, Jay Emerson, MCMC, numerics, Python 3, R, Yale University Statistics Department | Leave a comment