One of the key concepts in Survival Analysis is the Hazard Function.
But like a lot of concepts in Survival Analysis, the concept of “hazard” is similar, but not exactly the same as, its meaning in everyday English. Since it’s so important, though, let’s take a look. (more…)
The normal distribution is so ubiquitous in statistics that those of us who use a lot of statistics tend to forget it’s not always so common in actual data.
And since the normal distribution is continuous, many people describe all numerical variables as continuous. I get it: I’m guilty of using those terms interchangeably, too, but they’re not exactly the same.
Numerical variables can be either continuous or discrete.
The difference? Continuous variables can take any number within a range. Discrete variables can only take on specific values. For numeric discrete data, these are often, but don’t have to be, whole numbers*.
Count variables, as the name implies, are frequencies of some event or state. Number of arrests, fish (more…)
A central concept in statistics is the level of measurement of a variable. It’s so important to everything you do with data that it’s usually taught within the first week in every intro stats class.
But even something so fundamental can be tricky once you start working with real data. (more…)