Data

I’ve tried understanding Bayes’ Theorem several times. I’ve always managed to get confused. Specifically, I’ve always wondered why it’s better than simply using the average estimate from the past. So here’s a little attempt to jog my memory the next time I forget. Q: A coin shows 5 heads when tossed 10 times. What’s the probability of a heads? A: It’s not 0.5. That’s the most likely estimate. The probability distribution is actually: ...

I was browsing through Beautiful Data, and stumbled upon this gem of a visualisation. This is the default plot R provides when supplied with a table of data. A beautiful use of small multiples. Each box is a scatterplot of a pair of variables. The diagonal is used to label the rows. It shows for every pair of variables their correlation and spread – at a glance. Whenever I get any new piece of data, this is going to be the very first thing I do: ...