statistics you can probably trust

The exponential distribution looks harmless enough: $$ f(x) = \frac{1}{\theta}e^{-x/\theta}$$ It looks like someone just took the exponential function and… Read more

The most commonly used descriptive method for survival data is the Kaplan-Meier estimator (also known as the product-limit estimator). It… Read more

One of my favorite simulations is seeing how the relative frequency of an event stabilizes around a theoretical probability as… Read more

One of the first things you learn in an introductory mathematical statistics class is how to assign a probability model… Read more

Survey a random sample of 500 men and ask if they have seen Star Wars more than twice. Survey 500… Read more

Randomly select several values, say 10, from a standard Normal distribution. That’s a Normal distribution with a mean of 0… Read more

In a previous post, I described how a moment-generating function does what its name says it does. Still, though, it’s… Read more

The Poisson distribution can be derived from the binomial distribution by doing two steps: substitute \( \frac{\mu}{n} \) for p… Read more

I was reading one of my favorite statistics books, Principles of Statistics, and came across a fun problem I decided… Read more

Say you have a fair die. (Most of them are these days.) You roll it once and observe a 3…. Read more