In this week’s Brief, we look at social categories, and the role that statistics and data science have played in social engineering – 100 years ago and today. Our course spotlight is April 3 – May 1: Categorical Data Analysis See you in class! – Peter Bruce Founder, Author, and Senior Scientist The Normal ShareContinue reading “Feb 24: Statistics in Practice”
Daily Archives: February 24, 2020
The Normal Share of Paupers
In 2009, China began regional pilot programs that repurposed credit scores to a broader purpose – scoring a person’s “social credit.” 100 years earlier, at the height of the eugenics craze, the famous statistician Francis Galton undertook to repurpose statistical concepts in service of social engineering. The starting point was a social survey of LondonContinue reading “The Normal Share of Paupers”
Purity
In classification, purity measures the extent to which a group of records share the same class. It is also termed class purity or homogeneity, and sometimes impurity is measured instead. The measure Gini impurity, for example, is calculated for a two-class case as p(1-p), where p = the proportion of records belonging to class 1. Continue reading “Purity”