The Vantage Point

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Logical Fallacies Poster

Jesse Richardson, Andy Smith, and Som Meaden (2012) have created a poster quality infographic depicting and describing the logical fallacies to be avoided in discourse. According to the poster's creators:

A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they're often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don't be fooled! This website has been designed to help you identify and call out dodgy logic wherever it may raise its ugly, incoherent head.

Logical Fallacies [click image to enlarge]

The above logical fallacies poster should be hanging in every office, classroom, and home in America. Follow the link below to learn more about ordering or downloading personal copies.

Source: Richardson, J; Smith, A; & Meaden, S (2012), Thou Shall Not Commit Logical Fallacies.

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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Hide and Seek

On Philosophy, Science, and Data

According to Jim Harris (2013) of the Obsessive-Compulsive Data Quality (OCDQ) Blog:

Some might argue that philosophy only reigns in the absence of data, while science reigns in the analysis of data. Although in the era of big data there seems to be fewer areas truly absent of data, a conceptual bridge still remains between analysis and insight, the crossing of which is itself a philosophical exercise. So, an endless oscillation persists between science and philosophy, which is why science without philosophy is blind, and philosophy without science is empty. Data needs both science and philosophy.

Jim Harris

Let's face it, the historical relationship between science and philosophy has not always been friendly. Nevertheless, one cannot separate philosophy from science and still make sense of the world.

Source: Harris, J (2013, March 14), On Philosophy, Science, and Data, OCDQ Blog.

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Thursday, May 16, 2013

Jumping Through Hoops Not Learning

According to John Warner (2013) of Inside Higher Ed:

I believe a generation of No Child Left Behind-style testing has trained our students to worry almost exclusively about the “whats” rather than the “whys.” They arrive in my class oriented towards learning the rules that must be followed to jump through each successive hoop. The difficulty of flipping the switch from rules to choices seems to increase with each successive cohort.

John Warner (1970- )

I share John Warner's concerns as an educator. The question remains how to engage with this perspective of learning...

Source: Warner, J (2013, May 13), Thinking Context: School Is Not the Hunger Games, Inside Higher Ed.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Statisticians versus Data Scientist

David Smith at Revolutions (2013) compares statisticians with data scientists as follows:

Read More

The discipline of analytics is constantly evolving, or so it seems...

Source: Smith, D (2013, May 15), Statistics vs Data Science vs BI, Revolutions.

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Business Intelligence (BI) versus Data Science

David Smith at Revolutions (2013) compares business intelligence (BI) with data science as follows:

Read More

The discipline of analytics is constantly evolving, or so it seems...

Source: Smith, D (2013, May 15), Statistics vs Data Science vs BI, Revolutions.

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Real-Time Big Data Analytics: From Deployment to Production

Opportunities Abound in Our Time...

Society is likely living through a "once in a lifetime" opportunity for those without wealth to build an estate that can weather generations. Now is the time to acquire world-class skills that earn premium wages that convert into dividend and rent-earning equities over a lifetime.

Opportunities abound in our time...

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Well Said...

"Vices are not crimes."

~ Lysander Spooner

Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)

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Saturday, May 11, 2013

What is Reality?

There is a lesson for each of us in this short film clip taken from "Cigarettes and Coffee" (2003).

So, what is reality?

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Well Said...

"In a world where everybody is a publisher, no one is an editor..."

~ Scott Pelley

Scott Cameron Pelley (1957- )

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Data Analysis Skills Are In Demand

Prof Aurelie Thiele (2013) has produced a Wordle graphic based on the job qualifications for 30 industry positions appearing in the INFORMS classified pages. The graphic below is the result.

[click to enlarge]

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Let's face it, skills matter in today's economy. And while skills such as "communication" are clearly sought, technical skills otherwise overwhelm the industry job ads. My advice to college students heading into industry is to spend your time acquiring hard analytical skills that can be converted into premium wages, and socialize out of class on your own time. Data analysis skills are in demand right now, no doubt.

Source: Thiele, A (2013, May 9), Skills Industry-Bound OR MS/PhD Grads Should Have, Engineered.

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Thursday, May 09, 2013

Quandl Has Arrived

Looking for "big data" sources? Quandl enables searches of over 5,000,000 financial, economic, and social datasets made available by data contributors worldwide. Morover, every Quandl dataset is available for direct download via Python, Stata, Excel, R, as well as embeddable as a graph on any website. According to Quandl's creators:

Quandl has indexed over 5 million time-series datasets from over 400 sources. All of Quandl's datasets are open and free. You can download any Quandl dataset in any format that you want. You can also visualize, save, share, authenticate, validate, upload, index, merge and transform data. Our long-term goal is to make all the numerical data on the internet easy to find and easy to use.

Establishing a Quandl user account is free and easy. I tested downloading Quandl datasets using the Excel add-in and R package accessories readily available for download from the Quandl website -- both worked perfectly.

Quandl has arrived...

Learn More

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Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Well Said...

"R [Project R] has become the lingua franca [i.e., working language, bridge language, vehicular language, unifying language] for statistical computing."

~ Bernhard Pfaff