UCLA's New Undergraduate Major in "Data Theory"

UCLA has a new undergraduate major in Data Theory. Here is its catalog entry.

The video blurb about @UCLA's new undergraduate major (which I helped design) in "Data Theory" went live a week and a half ago, and I managed not to notice until now.

Here it is: https://t.co/iIZVPxUCK8

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) September 1, 2020

Update: Also see some hyperlinks in my previous blog entry about our new major.

TMNTing Wikipedia Pages: A Twitter Account

This is the right type of Twitter account. ;)

Pseudo-random number samplinghttps://t.co/bTMMPJhmlL pic.twitter.com/Sh8cScM65b

— Wiki Titles Singable to TMNT Themesong (@wiki_tmnt) December 19, 2019

(Tip of the cap to Evelyn Lamb.)

Tales from the ArXiv: Mathematics Paper or Science-Fiction Novel?

A new paper, which looks very fascinating, that just appeared on arXiv is called Tropical Principal Component Analysis on the Space of Ultrametrics.

Tropical PCA sounds very promising and fascinating. Additionally, I think the title of this paper would make a great title for a science-fiction novel.

Paper Title of the Day: "p-ing Everywhere"

The sort of paper title that one ultimately regrets, I think. pic.twitter.com/g19H4yTdn7

— Stuart Ritchie (@StuartJRitchie) November 10, 2019

(Tip of the cap to Chris Marcum.)

UCLA's New Undergraduate Major in "Data Theory"

At @UCLA (joint between the Math & Stats departments), I helped design a brand new, very exciting Data Theory undergraduate major.

Courses: https://t.co/z27ZJybKQj

To look up course identities: https://t.co/cHcYrQzVcH

Catalog listing: https://t.co/MMOfGX4Cf4 pic.twitter.com/ZZA4E1G8tE

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) August 1, 2019

Finding Identical Packs of Skittles

One blogger has examined the probability of finding identical packs of skittles and posted their data online.

In my new lower-division mathematical modeling course (Math 42; "Introduction to Data-Driven Mathematical Modeling: Life, The Universe, and Everything"), we started our unit on discrete stochastic modeling today, so this post makes me very happy! I have, of course, e-mailed my students about this.

(Tip of the cap to Jeremy Jay.)

But Are These Data Cookies Reproducible?

I think it's very important to check the reproducibility of these data.

(Tasty, tasty reproducibility.)

Last day of class tomorrow! I baked cookies for my Intro to Data Analytics students, with frosted data plots. Lucky them. #DAatDU pic.twitter.com/j3TCNeDOBe

— Dr. Sarah Supp (@srsupp) December 14, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Javier Buldú.)

Update: Now that I think of it, "Sweet, sweet reproducibility." would have been better phrasing, given its larger set of allusions.

We Kid the Statisticians Because We Love Them

;)

Found on the roadside: @SpringerStats yellow book, beside empty vodka bottles & cigarette packs pic.twitter.com/R8LawGlA7W

— Noah Williams (@Bellmanequation) March 18, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Kerstin Nordstrom.)

"Make Regression Great Again"

The new comic strip by PhD Comics is timely.

We can talk later about maximum likelihood estimation.

P.S. I stole the title from Won Chang's comment on the Facebook post by PhD Comics.

Tales from the ArXiv: "Not Quite Conclusions"

I love the title of Section VI in this paper.

Survivor Bias and the Hero's Path

The new SMBC is about survivor bias and the path of a hero.

XKCD on Linear Correlations

Pretty much.

(Tip of the cap to Piotr Szymański.)

Tales from the ArXiv: Iterated Agony Edition

The last sentence of this paper is priceless: We analytically characterize the detectability threshold and we show that an iterated version of agony can partly overcome this resolution limit.

Matching Bar Graphs to Percentages

Good try, NBC2. Thank you for playing.

(Tip of the cap to Maria Satterwhite and at least one person who I can't remember.)

Statisticians on a Plane

Or maybe not. :)

The Deadly Underbelly of Bayesianism (and its Relation to Immortality)

Well, according to SMBC Comics, anyway. :) It's pretty funny.

The Learning Curve in 'R'

Here it is. We need a version of this cartoon that compares 'R' with Matlab, Python, etc. (Also, it's fun to make fun of 'R'.)

(Tip of the cap to Felice Jacka.)

New Video Game: "Guess the Correlation"

You can literally play the video game Guess the Correlation!

I hope it has some good Easter Eggs!

(Tip of the cap to Physics Today.)

23 Unusual Ways to Die (Organized by US State)

This IFLS article shows a lovely plot that indicates 23 unusual ways to die, as organized by state in the US. Each state is colored by the most frequent of these unusual ways to die that occurs in that state. Several of the ones at the bottom of the list are particularly fantastic.

Learn Anatomy from Dissected Knit Creatures

Here's another really cool thing: knitted versions of dissected creatures.

Now that is sweet!

(Tip of the cap to Leslie Porter.)

Update: Of course, for several years, people have been able to experience the joys of plush microbes (these are especially awesome), plush subatomic particles, and even plush statistical distributions.

Update (3/31/15): I now have a post about this on the Improbable Research blog.