Word of the Week:  Bias

In this feature, we sometimes highlight terms that can have different meanings to different parts of the data science community, or in different contexts. Today’s term is “bias.” To the lay person, and to those worried about the ethical problems sometimes posed by the deployment…

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Gangs and Covid

Dr. Carlos Carcach is Professor & Director of the Center for Public Policy at the Escuela Superior de Economía y Negocios (ESEN) in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, and coordinator of ESEN's post-graduate program in predictive analytics, which offers online instruction in partnership with Statistics.com, using…

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Unemployment Insurance Fraud – Catching the Crooks

The worldwide Covid recession has led to a dramatic increase in unemployment and, hence, Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims. The figure below, from the U.S. Dept. of Labor (via https://www.npr.org/2020/03/26/821580191/unemployment-claims-expected-to-shatter-records), shows new claims on a weekly basis. Compare the March Covid-related peak on the right to…

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Three Myths in Data Science

Myth 1:  It’s All About Prediction “Who cares whether we understand the model - as long as it predicts well!” This was one of the seeming benefits of the era of big data and predictive modeling, and it set data science apart from traditional statistics.  …

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Statistics in Agriculture: Encycloweedia

Weeds are big business - the global herbicide market is over $35 billion annually. Weeds are also big government (think "invasive species"). California's listing of weeds is called Encycloweedia, and the state publishes a quarterly newsletter called Noxious Times. Colorado publishes a similar periodical, Invader.…

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Quotes about Data Science

“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” – Carly Fiorina, former CEO, Hewlett-Packard Co. Speech given at Oracle OpenWorld “Data is the new science. Big data holds the answers.” – Pat Gelsinger, CEO, EMC, Big Bets on Big Data, Forbes“Hiding within those…

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