These are my links for June 17th through June 18th:
- Random Walk / Daniel A. Becker – RANDOM WALK asks this question and presents experiments in mathematics and physics, showing the mysterious interaction of chaos and order in randomness.
The project RANDOM WALK simulates randomness in visualizations, which are easy to understand. In this way, it delivers insight into a phenomenon, which has so far remained unexplained. - Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, and Ratio Typologies are Misleading (application/pdf Object) – In the following sections, we review Stevens’s taxonomy and provide definitions; many have used these terms without clarifying their exact meaning. We discuss their use in statistics and in applications, and consider some of the classical criticisms of this work. Throughout our account, we provide references for interested readers who may wish to learn more. We then describe some of the failures of Stevens’s taxonomy to classify data, and examine the nature of these failures. Similarly, we consider whether modern statistical methods can be classified according to the types of data appropriate for them. Finally, we consider what ideas from Stevens’s work are still useful for modern computer-based statistical analysis.
- Clay Shirky: How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history | Video on TED.com – While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.
- Fundamental Statistical Concepts in Presenting Data (application/pdf Object) – Principles for Constructing Better Graphics
- Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science – Andrew Gelman's Blog on the titular topics.
