September 2022
Beginner to intermediate
326 pages
9h 33m
English
Content preview from Practical Linear Algebra for Data Science
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Chapter 11. General Linear Models and Least Squares
The universe is a really big and really complicated place. All animals on Earth have a natural curiousity to explore and try to understand their environment, but we humans are privileged with the intelligence to develop scientific and statistical tools to take our curiousity to the next level. That’s why we have airplanes, MRI machines, rovers on Mars, vaccines, and, of course, books like this one.
How do we understand the universe? By developing mathematically grounded theories, and by collecting data to test and improve those theories. And this brings us to statistical models. A statistical model is a simplified mathematical representation of some aspect of the world. Some statistical models are simple (e.g., predicting that the stock market will increase over decades); others are much more sophisticated, like the Blue Brain Project that simulates brain activity with such exquisite detail that one second of simulated activity requires 40 minutes of computation time.
A key distinction of statistical models (as opposed to other mathematical models) is that they contain free parameters that are fit to data. For example, I know that the stock market will go up over time, but I don’t know by how much. Therefore, I allow the change in stock market price over time (that is, the slope) to be a free parameter whose numerical value is determined by data.
Crafting a statistical model can be difficult and requires creativity, experience, ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.