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John Rauser keynote: "Statistics Without the Agonizing Pain" -- Strata + Hadoop 2014

O'Reilly · talk · Watch on YouTube

Data science & statisticsProbability & game theory

What it is

John Rauser's Strata 2014 keynote argues that programmers can learn statistics quickly by simulating random processes and shuffling data. He explains p-values through resampling rather than formulas.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN recommends it as an excellent programmer-friendly explanation of p-values and statistical thinking.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 3 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2015, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “This is an excellent talk I attended a while ago that explains it very well from a programmer's perspective”

    Excellent explanation of p-values from a programmer's perspective

    TallGuyShort, 2015-11 · Strong recommendation · in “Not Even Scientists Can Easily Explain P-values”

  2. “if you can program, you have a huge advantage in learning statistics because you can simulate random processes”

    Programmers can learn statistics by simulating random processes

    jrauser, 2015-01 · Recommendation · in “Twitter’s new R package for anomaly detection”

  3. “The presenters advocate using simulation/bootstrapping/shuffling methods instead of memorizing formulas.”

    Advocates simulation and shuffling over memorizing formulas

    armanboyaci, 2025-03 · Recommendation · in “Statistical Formulas for Programmers (2013)”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: p-values, simulation, resampling, data science, bootstrapping

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