Statistical Methods for Data Science: A Practical Guide Data science relies on solid statistics. This practical guide helps you choose methods, check assumptions, and report results clearly. You will learn how to turn data into evidence you can trust, even when data are noisy or limited.
Core ideas Statistics lets us describe data, quantify uncertainty, and build models. Key ideas include:
Descriptive statistics and visualization to summarize data. Probability and sampling to understand what a sample tells us about a population. Inference with confidence intervals and hypothesis tests to draw conclusions. Modeling with regression and classification to predict and compare options. Practical steps Define the question and a simple success metric. Collect and clean data; watch for missing values. Explore with charts and basic numbers to spot patterns and anomalies. Check assumptions (for example, normality, independence, and sample size). Choose a method that fits the goal: describe, estimate, or predict. Run the analysis, then interpret results in plain language. Report limitations and guard against overfitting or data leakage. Example: A/B testing a page change Two versions of a landing page are shown to equal-sized groups. The conversion rates differ by a small amount. A simple hypothesis test checks whether the difference is likely real or due to chance. If the test yields a p-value below a chosen threshold, you may prefer the new version; if not, you revisit the change. Beyond p-values, estimating a confidence interval for the difference helps you understand practical impact. For example, if p1 = 0.08 and p2 = 0.06 with n1 = n2 = 1000, the difference is 2 percentage points. The standard error is roughly sqrt(p1(1-p1)/n1 + p2(1-p2)/n2) ≈ 0.012, giving a 95% confidence interval that informs decision making.
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