John Rauser keynote: "Statistics Without the Agonizing Pain" -- Strata + Hadoop 2014
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as an excellent programmer-friendly explanation of p-values and statistical thinking.
What it is
John Rauser's Strata 2014 keynote argues that programmers can learn statistics quickly by simulating random processes and shuffling data. He explains p-values through resampling rather than formulas.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2015 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec TallGuyShort · 2015-11 · on “Not Even Scientists Can Easily Explain P-values”
This is an excellent talk I attended a while ago that explains it very well from a programmer's perspective: [this video]
Recommends jrauser · 2015-01 · on “Twitter’s new R package for anomaly detection”
I have a talk in which I argue that if you can program, you have a huge advantage in learning statistics because you can simulate random processes and tinker with them to get an intuitive sense of the statistics involved. At Data Driven NYC: [LINK] Keynote at Strata+Hadoop World 2014: [this video]
Recommends armanboyaci · 2025-03 · on “Statistical Formulas for Programmers (2013)”
>Being able to apply statistics is like having a secret superpower. I totally with this sentence. BUT If you ask for my opinion, merely knowing a list of statistical formulas is not very helpful. Most of the time, people don’t remember the underlying assumptions, so there is a fair chance they will use them in inappropriate situations. I recommend watching these two YouTube videos. The presenters advocate using simulation/bootstrapping/shuffling methods instead of memorizing formulas. Jake Vanderplas - Statistics for Hackers [LINK] John Rauser - Statistics Without the Agonizing Pain [this video]
Cites harveywi · 2016-06 · on “Statistics for Hackers [video]”
Similar in spirit to John Rauser's 2014 Strata Conference + Hadoop World keynote "Statistics Without the Agonizing Pain" ( [this video] ).