Python for Statistical Analysis

Let's do a live run through installing anaconda - the best way of getting a scientific distribution of python on your machine.

Anaconda download link: https://www.anaconda.com/distribution/

Miniconda download link: https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html

Now that we've got python installed, we need to figure out how we should write our code. There are a lot of options, so lets touch on them quickly so you can find something that works well for you!

Better than just talking about editors, let's run a few so you can see better how they work and how you can use them.

Finally, let's discuss how to keep track of your code. No one wants to lose work by accident, and there are a few ways around this. One way far superior to the others, as you'll see inside the video!

We'll be working with a lot of datasets in the coming lectures. So before we jump into that, let's discuss the different ways we can load data into our code. No coding in this one, let's focus on the higher level for just a moment!

Jumping into the code, let's have a look at all the different ways we can load data into our code, using numpy, pandas and pickling!

Loading data into our code is the easy part. The vast majority of our time will be spent sanitising, cleaning and preparing the data. Let's run through some basic tools you can use to do this, and hope that your first project goes as simply as this example!

Sometimes the data we get doesn't just have NaN's in our data, we have outlying points that we want to identify and potentially remove. Let's look at how.

A brief conceptual overview of a bunch of ways we can visualise one dimensional data before jumping into the code!

One dimensional histograms are easy to make, and by far the most common way of visualising a distribution. You'll see why in the video.

For a bit of flair, we can look at bee swarm plots. Great for presentations!

Another useful tool are box and violin plots. Violin plots can be elegant and useful in direct comparisons, and are used a lot in scientific publications.

Empirical CDFs aren't the most useful visualisation tool, but boy will they come in handy later when we apply statistical tests, so let's cover them here. On top of that, let's also quickly look at panda's describe function, which will quickly become a staple of your workflow.

What do we do when we need to go beyond a single dimension? How do we visualise multivariate distributions and data?

The most common, and probably most useful, visualisation for higher dimensional data is a scatter matrix. And lucky for us, pandas has one built in!

If we want something a bit smaller and faster to make than a scatter matrix, we can get basic information out of a correlation plot! We'll cover correlation mathematically a bit later in the course, so don't worry if the underlying math isn't intuitive!

Let's look at 2D data briefly, and work with some examples on how to plot 2D histograms, contour plots and utilise the power of kernel density estimation!

Let's mix some probability into things and see talk about likelihood contours!

If you are having LaTeX errors here, add usetex=False to c.configure. Will add video annotation when my computer stops crashing on video render -_-

Time to put everything back together for a quick summary! Don't forget to download the attached cheat sheet!

Let's get motivated.

We almost always need some measure of the central value in our data or a distribution. Unfortunately, there are many ways of doing this, and we need to figure out which methods we should use in which circumstance.

After finding a central value, we normally always need to characterise the width of the distribution. This one has less freedom, which simplifies things!

Finally, sometimes our distributions are asymmetric, and this needs to be quantified if we wish to approximate our data.

What if we don't want a few standardised numbers and are happy to compress our distribution to an arbitrary number of points? Why, then we'd use percentiles!

Let's move onto multivariate distributions again, just like in the EDA section. Let's quantify covariance and correlation.

Time to wrap it all up for this chapter! Don't forget to download the attached cheat sheet!

Let's refresh some basic probability theory, probabilistic identities and the difference between a probability density function and a probability mass function.

What are common PDF and PMFs? What are their forms, their parametrisation and when should we use them?

Let's take the functions from the previous video and learn how to invoke them in code!

What are cumulative density functions, survival functions, and how can we use probability theory when our distributions have no analytic form?

Empirical probability distributions in code! Let's discuss different interpolation and integration methods that come hand-in-hand with using an arbitrary function as a PDF.

Now that we've got all these probability density functions, how can we sample from them to generate our own random numbers, and what on Earth is the Central Limit Theorem, and why is it so important?

Now that we've covered the concepts in the previous video, let's power through the code!

If you're still a bit confused over the central limit theorem, not to worry, let's dig a little deeper!

The main takeaways from probability theory.

An introduction to hypothesis testing. After all, what does the phrase even mean?

A short motivation example about detecting loaded dice!

Let's talk about the simplest forms of tests - one-tailed and two-tailed tests.

Let's answer a function question about the fate of the planet from asteroid impacts using a one-tailed test.

Proportion testing is a special case of one and two tailed testing, so when would we use it and why?

A fun election rigging example of when proportion testing is useful.

Pearson's Chi2 test is a broad and powerful statistical check for discrete outcomes. Let's see how it works and apply it to our loaded dice example.

If we want to compare entire distributions against each other, then we need other tests. Let's look at the original test - the KS test, and its improved version - the AD test.

Putting it all back together. Don't forget to download the attached cheat sheet!

A brief summary of each chapter, highlighting the main points of each.

A case example of exactly what not to do when you're hypothesis testing.

An introduction to gaussian proccesses.

An extra prac looking at relative rates for disparate distributions.

An extra prac looking at low-number statistics.

An extra prac looking at multivariate-gaussian modelling of relative rates.

An example on how to perform numerical uncertainty analysis that can be applied to almost any statistical problem.