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Regularized Model

In building statistical and machine learning models, regularization is the addition of penalty terms to predictor coefficients to discourage complex models that would otherwise overfit the data.  An example is ridge regression.

Factor

The term “factor” has different meanings in statistics that can be confusing because they conflict.   In statistical programming languages like R, factor acts as an adjective, used synonymously with categorical – a factor variable is the same thing as a categorical variable.  These factor variables have levels, which are the same thing as categories (aContinue reading “Factor”

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”

Predictor P-Values in Predictive Modeling

Not So Useful Predictor p-values in linear models are a guide to the statistical significance of a predictor coefficient value – they measure the probability that a randomly shuffled model could have produced a coefficient as great as the fitted value.  They are of limited utility in predictive modeling applications for various reasons: Software typicallyContinue reading “Predictor P-Values in Predictive Modeling”

Latin hypercube

In Monte Carlo sampling for simulation problems, random values are generated from a probability distribution deemed appropriate for a given scenario (uniform, poisson, exponential, etc.).  In simple random sampling, each potential random value within the probability distribution has an equal value of being selected. Just due to the vagaries of random chance, clusters of similarContinue reading “Latin hypercube”

Regularize

The art of statistics and data science lies, in part, in taking a real-world problem and converting it into a well-defined quantitative problem amenable to useful solution. At the technical end of things lies regularization. In data science this involves various methods of simplifying models, to minimize overfitting and better reveal underlying phenomena. Some examplesContinue reading “Regularize”

Probability

You might be wondering why such a basic word as probability appears here. It turns out that the term has deep tendrils in formal mathematics and philosophy, but is somewhat hard to pin down

Gittens Index

Consider the multi-arm bandit problem where each arm has an unknown probability of paying either 0 or 1, and a specified payoff discount factor of x (i.e. for two successive payoffs, the second is valued at x% of the first, where x < 100%).  The Gittens index is […]