While Model Trains

Read data blog posts.
Carefully handpicked.
Presented 3 at a time.

Understanding the beta distribution (using baseball statistics)

David Robinson

"The beta distribution is best for representing a probabilistic distribution of probabilities- the case where we don’t know what a probability is in advance, but we have some reasonable guesses."

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Open letter to journal editors: dynamite plots must die

Rafael Irizarry

A critique of dynamite plots and suggestions for better alternatives.

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Prediction intervals for Random Forests

Ando Saabas

Prediction intervals are commonly used for linear models but are often underused for random forests. Leveraging the fact that a random forest can provide a conditional distribution instead of just the conditional mean makes prediction intervals relatively straightforward to use in this context.

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