Getting Started with Data Science: Making Sense of Data with Analytics

Chapter 8. To Be or Not to Be

To be human is all about making choices. Some choices we cherish, others we regret. But the very freedom to make choices is what we appreciate the most of all the basic human rights. And while we continue to debate about what Shakespeare really meant by “To be or not to be” in a soliloquy in Hamlet, it indeed became the question that many now seek to answer.

In statistical analysis, we often analyze choices, both rational and irrational. Why some individuals choose not to study beyond high school while others continue to spend additional years at colleges and universities is one such question that economists, policymakers, and others try to answer. In the financial sector, analysts try to forecast the probability ...