In any other circumstance, it might make sense to define the extent of the terrain (Data Science) first, and then locate and describe the landmarks (Principles). But this data revolution we are experiencing defies a cadastral survey. Areas are continually being annexed into Data Science. For example, biometrics was traditionally statistics for agriculture in all its forms but now, in Data Science, it means the study of characteristics that can be used to identify an individual. Examples of non-intrusive measurements include height, weight, fingerprints, retina scan, voice, photograph/video (facial landmarks and facial expressions), and gait. A multivariate analysis of such data would be a complex project for a statistician, but a software engineer might appear to have no trouble with it at all. In any applied-statistics project, the statistician worries about uncertainty and quantifies it by modelling data as realisations generated from a probability space. Another approach to uncertainty quantification is to find similar data sets, and then use the variability of results between these data sets to capture the uncertainty. Both approaches allow 'error bars' to be put on estimates obtained from the original data set, although the interpretations are different. A third approach, that concentrates on giving a single answer and gives up on uncertainty quantification, could be considered as Data Engineering, although it has staked a claim in the Data Science terrain. This article presents a few (actually nine) statistical principles for data scientists that have helped me, and continue to help me, when I work on complex interdisciplinary projects.
We provide accessible insight into the current 'replication crisis' in 'statistical science', by revisiting the old metaphor of 'court trial as hypothesis test'. Inter alia, we define and diagnose harmful statistical witch-hunting both in justice and science, which extends to the replication crisis itself, where a hunt on p-values is currently underway.
With unprecedented and growing interest in data science education, there are limited educator materials that provide meaningful opportunities for learners to practice statistical thinking, as defined by Wild and Pfannkuch (1999), with messy data addressing real-world challenges. As a solution, Nolan and Speed (1999) advocated for bringing applications to the forefront in undergraduate statistics curriculum with the use of in-depth case studies to encourage and develop statistical thinking in the classroom. Limitations to this approach include the significant time investment required to develop…
Randomization procedures are used in legal and statistical applications, aiming to shield important decisions from spurious influences. This article gives an intuitive introduction to randomization and examines some intended consequences of its use related to truthful statistical inference and fair legal judgment. This article also presents an open-code Java implementation for a cryptographically secure, statistically reliable, transparent, traceable, and fully auditable randomization tool.
Research often necessitates of samples, yet obtaining large enough samples is not always possible. When it is, the researcher may use one of two methods for deciding upon the required sample size: rules-of-thumb, quick yet uncertain, and estimations for power, mathematically precise yet with the potential to overestimate or underestimate sample sizes when effect sizes are unknown. Misestimated sample sizes have negative repercussions in the form of increased costs, abandoned projects or abandoned publication of non-significant results. Here I describe a procedure for estimating sample sizes ad…
The 175th anniversary of the ASA provides an opportunity to look back into the past and peer into the future. What led our forebears to found the association? What commonalities do we still see? What insights might we glean from their experiences and observations? I will use the anniversary as a chance to reflect on where we are now and where we are headed in terms of statistical education amidst the growth of data science. Statistics is the science of learning from data. By fostering more multivariable thinking, building data-related skills, and developing simulation-based problem solving, we…
Many have argued that statistics students need additional facility to express statistical computations. By introducing students to commonplace tools for data management, visualization, and reproducible analysis in data science and applying these to real-world scenarios, we prepare them to think statistically. In an era of increasingly big data, it is imperative that students develop data-related capacities, beginning with the introductory course. We believe that the integration of these precursors to data science into our curricula-early and often-will help statisticians be part of the dialogu…
Highly Principled Data Science insists on methodologies that are: (1) scientifically justified, (2) statistically principled, and (3) computationally efficient. An astrostatistics collaboration, together with some reminiscences, illustrates the increased roles statisticians can and should play to ensure this trio, and to advance the science of data along the way.
This paper seeks to provide a thorough account of the ubiquitous nature of the Bayesian paradigm in modern statistics, data science and artificial intelligence. Once maligned, on the one hand by those who philosophically hated the very idea of subjective probability used in prior specification, and on the other hand because of the intractability of the computations needed for Bayesian estimation and inference, the Bayesian school of thought now permeates and pervades virtually all areas of science, applied science, engineering, social science and even liberal arts, often in unsuspected ways. T…
Demand for data science education is surging and traditional courses offered by statistics departments are not meeting the needs of those seeking training. This has led to a number of opinion pieces advocating for an update to the Statistics curriculum. The unifying recommendation is computing should play a more prominent role. We strongly agree with this recommendation, but advocate the main priority is to bring applications to the forefront as proposed by Nolan and Speed (1999). We also argue that the individuals tasked with developing data science courses should not only have statistical tr…
Data science is a discipline that provides principles, methodology and guidelines for the analysis of data for tools, values, or insights. Driven by a huge workforce demand, many academic institutions have started to offer degrees in data science, with many at the graduate, and a few at the undergraduate level. Curricula may differ at different institutions, because of varying levels of faculty expertise, and different disciplines (such as Math, computer science, and business etc) in developing the curriculum. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth started offering degree programs in data s…
This paper is about how we study statistical methods. As an example, it uses the random regressions model, in which the intercept and slope of cluster-specific regression lines are modeled as a bivariate random effect. Maximizing this model's restricted likelihood often gives a boundary value for the random effect correlation or variances. We argue that this is a problem; that it is a problem because our discipline has little understanding of how contemporary models and methods map data to inferential summaries; that we lack such understanding, even for models as simple as this, because of a n…
Data science has arrived, and computational statistics is its engine. As the scale and complexity of scientific and industrial data grow, the discipline of computational statistics assumes an increasingly central role among the statistical sciences. An explosion in the range of real-world applications means the development of more and more specialized computational methods, but five Core Challenges remain. We provide a high-level introduction to computational statistics by focusing on its central challenges, present recent model-specific advances and preach the ever-increasing role of non-sequ…
A growing number of students are completing undergraduate degrees in statistics and entering the workforce as data analysts. In these positions, they are expected to understand how to utilize databases and other data warehouses, scrape data from Internet sources, program solutions to complex problems in multiple languages, and think algorithmically as well as statistically. These data science topics have not traditionally been a major component of undergraduate programs in statistics. Consequently, a curricular shift is needed to address additional learning outcomes. The goal of this paper is …
We describe an introductory data science course, entitled Introduction to Data Science, offered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The course introduced general programming concepts by using the Python programming language with an emphasis on data preparation, processing, and presentation. The course had no prerequisites, and students were not expected to have any programming experience. This introductory course was designed to cover a wide range of topics, from the nature of data, to storage, to visualization, to probability and statistical analysis, to cloud and high performa…
