Notebooks

Statistics

08 Apr 2008 20:46

An application of probability, with intimate ties to machine learning, non-demonstrative inference and induction.

Since June 2005, I have been a (very, very junior) professor of statistics. This made me interested in how to teach it.

See also: Properties vs. principles in defining "good statistics"

Things I need to learn more about:
Dependent data
Statistical inference for stochastic processes, a.k.a. time-series analysis. Signal processing and filtering. Spatial statistics.
Model selection
Gets its own notebook.
Adapting statistical procedures to data without losing validity
Sequential inference, adaptive sampling.
Model discrimination
That is, designing experiments so as to discriminate between competing classes of model. Adaptation to data issues here, too.
Rates of convergence of estimators to true values
Empirical process theory. (Cf. some questions in ergodic theory).
Estimating distribution functions
And estimating entropies, or other functionals of distributions.
Non-parametric methods
Both those that are genuinely distribution-free, and those that would more accurately be mega-parametric (even infinitely-parametric) methods, such as neural networks
Resampling methods
Including distribution-free resampling methods, especially for dependent data
Sufficient statistics
Get their own notebook.
Decision theory
Conventional, and the sorts with some connection to how real decisions are made.
Graphical models
Monte Carlo and other simulation methods
"De-Bayesing"
Ways of taking Bayesian procedures and eliminating dependence on priors, either by replacing them by initial point-estimates, or by showing the prior doesn't matter, in a sooner-than-asymptotic sense.
Information Geometry
Partial identification of parametric statistical models
Causal Inference


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