Applied Statistics - Week 5

Monday the 16th - Friday the 20th of December 2019

The following is a description of what we will go through during this week of the course. The chapter references and computer exercises are considered read, understood, and solved by the beginning of the following class, where I'll shortly go through the exercise solution.

NOTE: Sunday the 15th (at 22:00) is the deadline for the project. At the end of the week, we will by then essentially be done with most of the core curriculum, and I will not introduce anything fundamentally new on Friday, which will be dedicated to the discussion of the project and catching up on exercises (or Problem Set?).

General notes, links, and comments:
  • How to produce (great?) plots: Plotting inspiration and code


    Monday:
    The subject of the day will be fitting, moving towards advanced cases of fitting. As stated, this is a bit of an artform, and there is little literature on the subject - only (bitter?) experience!
    I'll also briefly discuss Simpson's Paradox with an example (from Berkeley), as this is a classic "paradox" in statistics and a good reminder to analyse data thoroughly before passing judgement on cases.!

    Reading:
  • Possibly Barlow page 184, section 10.2.2.
  • Possibly Cowan page 65.
  • Possibly Bevington chapters 6-8 (best of the three!).
    Lecture(s):
  • Advanced Fitting
  • Simpson's Paradox
    Computer Exercise(s):
  • Advanced fitting: FitAndTestingDistributions_original.ipynb

    Tuesday:
    The day will focus on calibration, which is a subtle subject, yet fairly straight forward, once you get the hang of the idea. The associated exercise is inspired by typical data analysis work.

    Reading:
  • No reading - logic and reason suffices.
    Lecture(s):
  • Calibration
    Computer Exercise(s):
  • Calibration: Calibration_original.ipynb
  • Calibration data file: data_calib.txt

    Friday:
    On Friday the 20th of December, I will not introduce anything new, but simply give a short summary/overview of the course so far and a review of the project experiments. In the exercise session, we will simply catch up and ask all the questions you might like to resolve before Christmas.

    Reading:
  • You should by now have read curriculum (roughly Barlow chapters 1-8).
    Lecture(s):
  • Project experiments review (To be posted!)
    Computer Exercise(s):
  • Catch up on previous exercises (perhaps in particular those related to the Problem Set!).
    Last updated: 14th of December 2019.