Exploratory data analysis
by John Wilder Tukey · first published 1970
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2013–2026first – last mentioned
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…invented FFT, in 1805. And "Between 1805 and 1965, some versions of FFT were published by other authors" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform#History p.s. I started reading Tukey's textbook Exploratory Data Analysis just yesterday. It's wonderful so far, a pleasure to read. "It is important to understand what you CAN DO before you learn to measure how WELL you seem to have DONE it." "The greatest value of a picture…
on “Claude Shannon Invented the Future” ↗Exploratory Data Analysis (Pearson Modern Classic) by John W. Tukey
on “Ask HN: What's the best book(s) to grasp statistics?” ↗…laborious to do by hand. I say, learn math first, then learn programming. Otherwise you're bound to spend your days automating the wrong thing. For programming statistics, I'd spend some time with Tukey's Exploratory Data Analysis before writing any code. It's pretty amazing what you can do with pen and paper.
on “Should computer programming be a prerequisite for learning statistics?” ↗…that I had something comprehensive to suggest. There are some things that I think everyone who deals with statistics should read, such as Freedman's 'Statistical Models and Shoe Leather'[^1] and Tukey's 'Exploratory Data Analysis'[^2]. Pearl's 'Causal Inference in Statistics' is the best introduction I know of to issues of causality as we understand them today. For actual inference, the basis is one player game theory (aka, decision…
on “We will never have enough software developers (2020)” ↗…having to march a few miles through thigh-deep fresh snow; when you get to the cabin with the roaring fire in the hearth, it all makes sense. I was pleased to see Cohen's laudatory review of Tukey’s Exploratory Data Analysis, one of those few books that survived my massive library downsizing of 2015. I hope to get around to reading more of it in the future. The nonsense Cohen assails here is confined to what he calls the…
on “J. Cohen's Review of Tukey’s Exploratory Data Analysis [pdf]” ↗…1940s/50s vibe: Thinking with a Pencil by Henning Helms. Covers illustrations, tracing, tables, maps and diagrams as well as 3d sketches. I gather that Tufte was influenced by John Tukey's 1977 book Exploratory Data Analysis which introduces the box and whisker plot, dot plot and so on. As to software, another poster has mentioned Tikz (usually used with LaTeX) and yes it is amazingly flexible and can produce just about…
on “I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph” ↗…in topology (in the back of Kelley's 'General Topology'), Tukey's lemma in axiomatic set theory, stepwise regression, power spectral estimation (Blackman and Tukey), the FFT (Cooley and Tukey), and 'Exploratory Data Analysis', had been working in applied math and computing, wrote G. Watson, and got accepted. I also got accepted in the Division of Applied Math at Brown and in Operations Research at Cornell. I went to Hopkins.
on “I cannot afford to go back to engineering school” ↗…for all but the most important conclusions. Lower thresholds probably won't do it either. Right now, the only solutions I see are: a) Baysian methods b) Fisher's single H hypothesis method c) Tukey's Exploratory Data Analysis method. d) All of the above.
on “P values are not as reliable as many scientists assume (2014)” ↗> 2. John Tukey (1977). Exploratory Data Analysis. > This book has been hugely influential and is a fun read that can be digested in one sitting. Wow. The PDF is over 700 pages. That seems fairly impressive for single-sitting digestion.
on “Ideas in statistics that have powered AI” ↗