Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Statistics/Archive 6

There's a debate at Talk:Debate_on_the_monarchy_in_Canada#Polling on whether reporting the questions and results of public opinion polls is a violation of the pollster's copyright and whether media sources on polling results can be considered reliable sources. Please share your knowledge/opinions. AnonAnnu (talk) 06:07, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Quasi-maximum likelihood was the most visited (by some measure) economics related article in June 2015 hist, archiving 40,000 hits per day. However, the article could do with improvement. For example what is the Quasi-maximum likelihood used for? Jonpatterns (talk) 09:24, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT THE EXACT FORMULA FOR BESSEL CORRECTION BASED ON SAMPLING WITHOUT REPLACEMENT HAS AN ADDITIONAL FACTOR OF N/(N-1). E(S2)= N(n-1)var(x)/((N-1)n) AND VARIANCE OF SAMPLE MEANS=(N-n)var(x)/(N-1)n. I AM JUST CONCERNED THAT YOU DON'T MENTION IT EXPLICITLY IN THIS ARTICLE. INSTEAD, ONE CAN IMPLICITLY DEDUCE IT FROM THE ARTICLE ABOUT VARIANCE, BECAUSE IT IS DUE TO THE COVARIANCE TERMS. ISN'T THIS THE REASON WHY THE CORRECTION IS BIASED FOR STANDARD DEVIATION? IN ANY CASE, HOW DOES ONE DERIVE THESE EXPRESSIONS FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES BECAUSE I HAVE PROVED THEM BY MERE INDUCTION? BY MUZINGU DANIEL KAMPALA, UGANDA, EAST AFRICA. 14.07.2015 --154.73.12.87 (talk) 14:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Comments would be appreciated on this RfC: Talk:Infinite_monkey_theorem#RfC:_Which_of_these_versions_of_the_lead_is_the_more_accurate_and_informative.3F. Thanks DaveApter (talk) 10:28, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I have been working on logistic regression which was tagged as being unclear. I'd like comments on whether it is now clear enough. Thanks. (I've only been editing on Wikipedia for a few days, so I am not sure of how to do things). PeterLFlomPhD (talk) 12:50, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I noticed that there are only 2 articles in the new articles list. Can this be right? Also, I added an article

I've created a new article on the British statistician Roger Thatcher.

Additional input for further research collaboration and secondary sources would be appreciated at the article's talk page, at Talk:Roger Thatcher.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 05:12, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

On the pseudolikelihood page, a set of random variables is declared, but it seems to me that the notation is wrong.

It is declared as:

${\displaystyle X=X_{1},\;...\;,X_{n}}$

But, I think, it should be declared as:

${\displaystyle X=\{X_{1},\;...\;,X_{n}\}}$

Furthermore, a tuple describing a dependency between two random variables ${\displaystyle X_{i}}$ and ${\displaystyle X_{j}}$ is defined using the set notation, which seems a bit odd. Why not use ${\displaystyle (X_{i},X_{j})\in E}$ instead? Or something else to distinguish tuples from sets?

(It seems inappropriate to just change it. But I am not sure how many people are on this page. It seems rather quiet here.)

ArtificialUser (talk) 17:38, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

http://static.ozone.ru/multimedia/book_file/1011869368.pdf вот это произведение -- 2015 года -- стр. 14, 15:: "исследование моральных явлений привело к появлению моральной статистики, возникла ??психометрика?? т.е. ??наука об измерении психики человека??; ??в физике выделилась статистическая механика??; социометрика [прим. моё социометрика не признана научным направлением в 2002 году точно была и сильно просто таки -- "не упоминайте даже названия!!"]; в истории ??историометрика??, или ??клиометрика??. Статистические методы нашил своё применение в генетике и ботанике и т.д." Olga V. Demir (Petchyonkina) (talk) 00:01, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

A new article,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ensemble_Kalman_filter#links_to_cudenver.edu Rendering failed

Generation of the document file has failed.

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Return to Special:Book — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.43.75.161 (talk) 22:23, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

In my work life at NCBI (NIH), a key project is building an open access glossary for biomedicine and biomedical research (more about that here and here). We are basing this glossary largely on NIH resources. But when we cannot identify an accurate definition for a term that is reasonably understandable, we draw on Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles should begin with a definition that is accessible to lay people. When Wikipedia doesn't have a short accessible description, we work with WikiProject Medicine to achieve that, via the page's talk page. Around 15% of the glossary comes from Wikipedia/Wiktionary.

We have recently broadened the scope of the NIH glossary to cover research design and terminology, and we are again drawing on the Wikipedia - see for example cross-sectional study. When it comes to statistical terms, we're going to need to rely on Wikipedia a great deal: these terms are frequently missing from available glossaries, or definitions exist, but they are either inaccessible or inaccurate. I realize how difficult it is, to achieve both accessibility and accuracy in describing statistical methodologies and terminology. However, it is critically important. I'll be working with some statisticians who are keen on helping with this but haven't been involved in Wikipedia before, and we will be organizing some edit-a-thons for statisticians as well.

Wikiproject Medicine now has a translation project, which involves making the introductory paras of medicine pages very accessible, and then having these translated. This idea of having accessible introductions is a great idea, and it would be wonderful to see that happen for statistical pages too. Are others in Project Statistics interested in this challenge? I'm very much looking forward to participating in the project, and look forward to many interesting discussions. Hildabast (talk) 16:58, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Welcome to WP:Statistics! It sounds like a worthy project and we welcome more statisticians working on Wikipedia stats articles. I've worked on simplifying leads for math and stats articles in the past and it is a challenge to simplify some topics without compromising correctness. I am interested in the project and would like to see if I can help. I notice in the cross-sectional study example above, you all are just taking part of the first sentence of the article. Is PubMed Health mostly looking to extract sound bites like this, or more full leads? --Mark viking (talk) 18:18, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! That's great! Yes, I agree it's going to be tough, but it will be interesting for sure. For the PubMed Health glossary, it has to be really short. It could be longer than that example, but not by a whole lot. Hildabast (talk) 21:44, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Would knowledgeable Statistics Project editors please look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The rich get richer (statistics) and comment. Better yet, please improve the article. Thanks. – S. Rich (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Could you have a look at this effort, here, to use clade diagrams to summarize pharma business acquisitions. My take at present is that the images created are devoid of standard quantitative meaning—nothing is captured by vertical and horizontal line lengths, as far as I can tell—and so they are a misapplication of this maths/graphic presentation method. Moreover, I argue that they are misleading (presenting a time axis, but not making spacing of events proportionate to the historical time differences), much harder to maintain (consider adding entries to a std Table versus this graphic), more likely to diminish article quality (in their ambiguity of content, again, over a std Table with clear headings), and therefore practically amenable to decay as a result. I would add to this, in this esteemed stats context, that they would make those who trained us, and other purists in methodology and meaning (and Edward Tufte more generally), turn in their graves/beds. After having a look at the User page and at a couple of pages linked on that sandbox page, leave your opinion here, regarding the overall effort? Thanks for your opinion. Cheers. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 01:37, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry about the inappropriate posting above. I have opened a discussion in the appropriate forum, here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Companies#Diagrams, for anyone who is interested Jytdog (talk) 03:37, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Jytdog moved the question to a new forum, the one where it is least likely to be viewed with rigour, see last comment and link. I reply there. I stand by the fact that stats is an appropriate venue to call for experts, and that it was appropriate to call out to you you at this location, to ask your input. All coming from this area, I would appreciate if you state for the record, if you have any real knowledge on this matter (have ever actually worked on a project involving cladogram-type computations/presentations), for sake of transparency, please. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 15:45, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

The article about Markov Models needs attention from an expert. If you are an expert on statistics or Markov Models please take a look at that article.

212.95.7.68 (talk) 08:09, 1 May 2016 (UTC) Dominik

I wonder why we have articles on both

Am ML estimator is one kind of M-estimator. An M-estimator is one kind of extremum estimator. My understanding is that the three classes of estimators are nested, not synonyms for each other. See for instance, this tutorial based on Chapter 6 of Hayashi's Extremum Estimators book. --Mark viking (talk) 23:14, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Hm, alright. --bender235 (talk) 23:40, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

We need some gigantic brains to help sort things out over here:

• Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll#A match column

Many thanks, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:15, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Every distribution article has an unsourced differential equation section, e.g.,

It's not. See Pearson distribution. Ozob (talk) 19:49, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

That's a rare exception. Most such sections are entirely unsourced. See for example

fgnievinski (talk

) 19:27, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

I think Ozob's point is that some of the other distributions' differential equations are special cases of the Pearson system; see for instance [2]. These sections do need sourcing, but it doesn't look like OR. -Mark viking (talk) 21:27, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

? this definition skey

   γ = 16 α 2 ( 11 α 2 + 6 ) ( 5 α 2 + 4 ) 3 {\displaystyle \gamma ={\frac {16\alpha ^{2}(11\alpha ^{2}+6)}{(5\alpha ^{2}+4)^{3}}}} \gamma ={\frac {16\alpha ^{2}(11\alpha ^{2}+6)}{(5\alpha ^{2}+4)^{3}}}

think denominator should be squared not cubed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kornbrot (talk • contribs) 09:06, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

List of countries and dependencies by population is an article that is relevant to this project. After having it drop off my watchlist some time ago I returned on 9 August 2016 to find that the population table is constantly being edited without any indication of sourcing, or edit summaries, usually by IPs or newly registered editors. The complete lack of sourcing for new edits means that the data in this article is dubious at best. One particular problem that I found is that data templates, which are used to automatically calculate today's population based on official sources, have been removed and replaced with unsourced manual calculations. Several times now I have had to restore these templates after yet another unsourced, unexplained change.[3][4][5][6][7] I have now tagged the article to identify issues, and requested semi-protection, but the input by responsible editors who can update the article with accurate, sourced data is needed. --AussieLegend (✉) 04:40, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm trying to work out what the appropriate categories are for Statistical disclosure control. It's been put into Category:Human subject research and Category:Disclosure, but I figure there's got to be a subcategory of Category:Statistics for it to go in, too. Given its use in statistical agencies, I thought it might belong somewhere in Category:Official statistics, but none of the subcategories really fit and I'm not sure it's a great fit for the main category either. Any thoughts? Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 04:41, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't know much about Cohen's kappa, but it's been on my watchlist for a long time. In the past two days, a couple of IP editors each made an edit—one of them a fairly substantial edit—and I was hoping that somebody who understands the math better than I do could check that the edits were legitimate and not subtle vandalism. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:49, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

I took a look at it and both edits seem fine. I think the purpose of the substantial edit was to be a bit more pedagogical and show the explicit ${\displaystyle a,b,c,d}$ formulas in addition to the actual numbers of the example. The second edit corrected an error in the first edit. --Mark viking (talk) 03:09, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Should the definition of simple linear regression include the use of ordinary least squares (OLS) as the estimation technique, or does the term embrace non-OLS methods (e.g. least absolute deviations)? Interested editors may wish to respond at Talk:Simple linear regression#Title change. Qwfp (talk) 08:42, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Greetings WikiProject Statistics/Archive 6 Members!

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Do we need Category:Probability theorists and Category:Researchers in stochastics to be kept separated? Their scope looks pretty similar but I may well be overlooking something here. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:55, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

• Further discussion, see CfD proposal. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:27, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Isambard Kingdom has proposed deletion of material from several statistics project articles with the justification that the material is too detailed.

The justification raises a fundamental issue about the suitable level of presentation in Wikipedia statistics articles. I believe the question would benefit from discussion among members of the Statistics WikiProject. (For examples of Isambard Kingdom's proposed deletions see the talk pages for the Hosmer-Lemeshow test, Kaplan-Meier estimator, or Exponential distribution)

A common criticism of Wikipedia statistics articles is that they are not comprehensible to non-statisticians. Here are examples from some of the most frequently-read statistics pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Standard_deviation

• "Absolutely obtuse to a lay person"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Confidence_interval

• Utterly indecipherable to the lay-reader. If the general public is your audience, this article is a complete failure. I'm a reader with an advanced degree, and a well-rounded education, and I can't penetrate even the lede.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chi-squared_test

• "The explanation is completely in theoretical terms. I'm trying to understand an article better, and this piece is absolutely no help in doing so."

• "The first sentence is ridiculously complicated! Statistics is very poorly explained on wikipedia, and this is one of the worst examples."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Regression_analysis

• "Who is this article for? Well it isn't for me. I understood NOTHING!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Binomial_distribution

• "Accessibility: Would it be possible to write an introductory section that gives just a conceptual description of what the binomial distribution is about, before we enter the maths?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Monte_Carlo_method

• "This article is quite technical. It would be nice to have a simpler layman's description too."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proportional_hazards_model

• "Please, somebody, take pity on those of us who need more fundamental understanding, and write an introduction to this subject that would be useful and graspable by anybody with the basic interest to look it up. That's how to make Wikipedia better; make it useful."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Logistic_regression

• "This page is utterly incomprehensible for the novice who just wants a basic idea of what logistic regression analysis *does*. The rigorous math is fine but before diving into it it would be nice to give a more comprehensible introduction and maybe a real world example that might illuminate the topic a bit."

• "The point above is extremely relevant. Most people do not have a firm understanding of Applied Mathematics or Statistics in general. Quite a surprise that none of the contributing authors has ventured into making their knowledge understandable for the lay person. The ability to teach or communicate concepts to others is a distinction between an expert and an apprentice."

• "Generally I've found that statistics articles not saying very much (although a few of them do) and consequently incomprehensible"

• "As a novice, most wikipedia articles on statistics are useless. An encylopedia article should present basic information, and direct users to more detailed information at other entries. Someone has written a very fine statistics textbook, in wiki-form, that is useless to either laymen or novices."

• "You MUST be joking. I don't think I am a dolt. However I am not a mathematician nor a statistician; I am a professional translator (also a linguist and also a contributor to Wikipedia but in language-related articles and such). I looked up this article today because I NEED to know, in a very basic LAYMAN's sort of way, what logistic regression is, what it is about, and ideally (for my purposes) an intelligible explanation of how it works which provides a model of the language that ought to be used when explaining this to someone."

• "recognisable (faithful might be a better word) to those familiar working with logistic regression but completely opaque to neophytes. I cannot understand it and I'm really trying."

The key problem with many of the statistics articles in Wikipedia, as indicated by the quotes, is that they are incomprehensible to lay readers. The current level of writing is suitable for a person already familiar with probability and statistics, not for the average readers.

The need is for articles that provide sufficient detail and examples that the reader can readily understand. Editors of the statistics pages have more familiarity with these concepts than most readers. What statistician-editors find tedious, many readers will find informative and necessary to understanding.

If Isambard Kingdom and other readers find the material too detailed and tedious, then one solution would be to move the introductory material to the end of the articles. The material could be in a section with the title "Introduction to x for the novice". In that way, readers who wish for a brief, mathematical, highly technical explanation can get that first, while readers who wish for a more comprehensible lay-oriented explanation can find it at the end.

Would appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. If this is not the suitable forum for this discussion, please inform me of the better forum and accept my apologies. Michaelg2015 (talk) 19:58, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Prodding articles for this reason is inappropriate, so they should all be rejected. However too technical is a problem. Two ways to address this are 1. to have the introductory material at the start. The lede should be understandable to most readers. Secondly for large articles/topics there could be an "Introduction to xxxx" article, linked right from the start of the technical article. I don't thnk the introductory stuff should be at the end, as the newbies to the topic won't even find it before they give up reading. Rather than a statistical specialist writing that material, we need someone like a maths teacher that knows statistics to work on it. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

"Too detailed" is not a reason for deletion, but I don't see evidence of a prod in the recent

WP:TECHNICAL is the basic guideline here. Among its advice is to make early sections as simple as possible and to write "one level down". Looking at the logistic regression article, the first two sections contain (1) what is it used for, (2) a concrete example) and (3) the basic concepts behind LR. I think it does a pretty good job of explaining the basics without straying into textbook territory. The prose could probably be improved. But I don't think there is any magic prose that in a few paragraphs will allow general audience folks without an understanding of basic notions like probability distribution or fitting data to a model to understand what LR is about. --Mark viking (talk

) 04:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

This discussion prompted me to revisit the Logistic regression article and make some revisions, although inadequate. Michaelg2015's post is useful in pointing out the big problems, and this is the right forum. I accept that the goal should be to make a broad set of statistical articles accessible to the lay person. This is to be done by writing accessible introductory explanations (what the statistical method is, a good concrete example, and a good discussion of history of applications) and relegating complications to later sections or to advanced level articles (which themselves should meets similar standards, but expecting readers to be informed on basic level topics). A common complication is that there are multiple ways most statistical methods were derived, or could be derived

• E.g., ordinary linear regression can be explained from curve-fitting, visually, then by arbitrary adoption of the minimization of the least squared deviations as a convenient method of calculation, or it can be derived from maximum likelihood estimation assuming normally-distributed errors).
• E.g., logistic regression can be explained from curve-fitting, and by the relative ease of calculation vs. the probit approach (see J.S. Cramer, The Origins of Logistic Regression, with interesting tabulation of number of papers by decade employing probit vs. logit), and by maximum likelihood

The principles of the above-mentioned

wp:Technical

are good, but we need more guidance for statistics in particular. A general solution to the problem could be to develop a good working format of a standard statistics article, and refine that with practice. Here's a draft outline:

1. One- or two-paragraph introduction stating what the statistical method "is". This must define the method simply, and it may mention that extensions/complications exist but not go into them at all, to avoid cognitive overload.

2. A good concrete example. This should be well-chosen. To be encyclopedic, it should be a real example that has historical or practical importance; it should not be a bad-textbook-like made up implausible example.

3. Applications history, scope, in various field areas. Comments on growth and decline of use relative to alternatives.

4. How the model can be derived, with historical notes, perhaps in chronological order of actual derivation of the model, but perhaps better in order of simplicity of explanation

• • Derivation 1 (e.g., curve-fitting, use of graph paper perhaps lognormal graph paper as relevant)
  • Derivation 2 (e.g., maximum likelihood)

4. Calculation of the method: brief discussion of algorithms, mention of some software

5. Interpretation of the estimated model.

6. Alternative measures of fit, there are always ad hoc alternatives, unfortunately, some of which may be useful. (What is an ROC curve, anyhow?)

7. Extensions

• • E.g., when data is pair-matched
  • E.g., multiple categories, unordered or not, rather than just binary outcomes for logistic regression

Note the "Extensions" should usually be short discussions linking to a main article on the advanced topic.

--doncram 11:54, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I'm new to this, I know how to edit Wikipedia pages, but I am reluctant to do that on such a fundamental point, so I thought I would post this here where I can't do any damage.

The CDF of the Gamma Distribution is correct on this Wiki Statistics project page, or whatever this place is called, but is incorrect on the main Wikipedia page you go to for the Gamma Distribution. The summary box on the RHS of the top of that page gives 1- F(x), not F(x) (I am not going to try to format this...). It is correct in the body of the Gamma Distribution page. Anyone familiar with this distribution will understand what I am talking about and will, I hope, change it. I have been working a lot with survival analysis lately and it is a disaster to get muddled on 1 - F(x) versus F(x).

Vandawk8 (talk) 14:58, 20 January 2017 (UTC) Vandawk8 (talk) 14:58, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. Looking at the article history, a recent editor changed the summary CDF to be in terms of the upper incomplete gamma function, whereas in the body of the text, the CDF is in terms of the lower incomplete gamma function. I think it is better to stick with the conventions in the body of the text for the summary template, so will make the change. In the future, if you see a problem, be bold in making a correction! There are others watching the page and will often discuss and revert if they think your edit is a mistake. Cheers, --Mark viking (talk) 18:49, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

The WikiJournal of Science is a start-up academic journal which aims to provide a new mechanism for ensuring the accuracy of Wikipedia's scientific content. It is part of a WikiJournal User Group that includes the flagship WikiJournal of Medicine.[3][4]. Like Wiki.J.Med, it intends to bridge the academia-Wikipedia gap by encouraging contributions by non-Wikipedians, and by putting content through peer review before integrating it into Wikipedia. Since it is just starting out, it is looking for contributors in two main areas: Editors See submissions through external academic peer review Format accepted articles Promote the journal Authors Original articles on topics that don't yet have a Wikipedia page, or only a stub/start Wikipedia articles that you are willing to see through external peer review (either solo or as in a group, process analagous to FA review) Image articles, based around an important medical image or summary diagram If you're interested, please come and discuss the project on the journal's talk page, or the general discussion page for the WikiJournal User group. ^ ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/analytics/spss/documentation/statistics/21.0/en/client/Manuals/IBM_SPSS_Statistics_Algorithms.pdf scroll down the left pane to the RANK procedure ^ ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/analytics/spss/documentation/statistics/21.0/en/client/Manuals/IBM_SPSS_Statistics_Command_Syntax_Reference.pdf Scroll down the left pane to RANK doi:10.15347/wjm/2017.001 . ^ "Wikiversity Journal: A new user group". The Signpost. 2016-06-15.

T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 10:29, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Does anyone have the expertise to add a figure to the ANCOVA article, so that the variables in the equation can be illustrated more clearly? See comments on

The article Mumbai statistics has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

WP:NOTSTATS

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. 70.51.200.162 (talk) 06:30, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

This would very helpful to bring insights. There are already (semi-)automated tools to generate pages summarizing the notable events of a particular centuries, decades and year. Just try it: the next article you read and you see a year, decade or century mentioned, put it between square brackets and enjoy being lead to a page with an overview of the most noteable events. The quest for developing such a tool was brought up in the portal talk article on "History": Portal_talk:History#How_about_automatically_making_human_population_evolution_numbers_appear_in_the_pages_giving_historic_overviews_e.g._when_clicking_a_particular_century.3F

Enjoy your day, like me :) --SvenAERTS (talk) 14:09, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post at Wikipedia:WikiProject Statistics/Archive 6/Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of WikiProject Statistics.

We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:

• The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
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We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of WikiProject Statistics, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Please see about "common errors" and about sample size guidance at Talk:Population proportion. This is an important introductory statistical topic, but the article was created in 2016 and was not part of WikiProject Statistics until just now. There are related articles at Sample size determination and P-chart and probably elsewhere, but a simple treatment of this important case is very important.

It oughta be possible to make this comprehensible for Wikipedia editors trying to reason about what sample size should suffice to determine the proportion of bad articles, out of some big list of possibly bad ones, as comes up at

17:54, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 29 May 2017 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

Third opinion on "Bayesian information criterion" vs. "Schwarz criterion"

Could someone please comment here. Thanks. --bender235 (talk) 11:07, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

The article on the Wigner semicircle distribution contains a section on related distributions that I think is in need of attention from an expert. The discussion of the Wigner parabolic distribution contains two different formulas for the PDF, both of which seem wrong to me (neither is properly normalized) but I don't know want to guess what the correct one should be. The rest of the section is confusing as well. MathHisSci (talk) 10:10, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

May an expert on the subject fix the lead section of this article. Hitro talk 21:51, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I notify to this project that there is an ongoing discussion about a statistical matter pertaining to the "religion in..." article format; HERE. We need some opinions to reach a consensus. Thank you.--

Also

talk

) 09:50, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

The article Akaike information criterion is currently rated as having Mid importance. In the 20th century, that would have been correct. Now, however, I believe that the article should be rated as having High importance. FlagrantUsername (talk) 15:12, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Statistics

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod ^talk 18:51, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I am writing regarding the page Info-metrics. The article has been tagged for WP:Notability. I have added several relevant journal articles and textbooks to the article's talk page. The editor who originally tagged the article contends that he does not have the expertise to evaluate the sources. I request help from this project. Arnob (talk) 18:26, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Your feedback is requested at Talk:Gender dysphoria#Off by two orders of magnitude?. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 11:37, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Could someone have a look at these four more or less recently created articles:

• Distribution-free maximum likelihood for binary responses
• Heteroskedasticity and nonnormality in the binary response model with latent variable
• Binary response model with continuous endogenous explanatory variables
• Probit model for panel data with heterogeneity and endogenous explanatory variables

To an utter layman like me, they all look somewhat related, but I'm not able to even venture understanding them, let alone thinking about a selective merger. Pinging Smmurphy who's been involved with two of them. – Uanfala (talk) 22:59, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

I am 100% behind deleting them. The user who created them (

non-POV, the articles do not, in my opinion, represent a genuine attempt to improve the encyclopedia and they don't really represent an net plust for the encyclopedia. Carolineneil was banned in this discussion[8], and deleting much of their work was endorsed in various discussions, including [9]. I went through the statistics/econometrics articles and proposed a few for merger, hoping that would get more eyes on the problem. I've never submitted an article for AfD, but would be happy to support deleting most/all of them. Smmurphy^(Talk

) 14:55, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Also noting Carolineneil's three other drafts:

Draft:Truncated Normal Hurdle Model

Draft:Duration models with multiple spells

Draft:Estimating The Peer Effect in A Network Model

Leaving for this project's members to decide what to do with them. – Uanfala (talk) 18:49, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Hello, I apologize for the lateness of this submission but I am going to the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) 2018 in Vancouver and wanted to submit a topic-contributed session that involves statistics, communication, and wikipedia. One speaker will present on the importance of graphical literacy and outline the wikipedia article she would like to create; I would be presenting on statistical literacy for scientists and how important this is for wikipedia editing as well as general statistics; and we would like to have someone from this group present to encourage the JSM audience to contribute to Wikipedia - to improve their own stats literacy and communication (continuing professional development), to provide service to their community and the wider community beyond statistics and practice (service), and even to do some scholarship (even though authorship is difficult to claim in Wikipedia, and "citations" are hard to justify if others can edit your work. Sponsoring groups for the session would be the ASA Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE - which I chair) and possibly the section on teaching statistics, so it is important for each session to include discussion of how engagement with this project (editing/promoting statistics on Wikipedia) can fulfill the ethical obligation to help statisticians and others communicate with data more clearly, and/or how editing for Wikipedia can support teaching and learning. If you're interested, please let me (Rochelle Tractenberg) know *ASAP* since the proposal is due 11 Jan 2018!

rotrac 21:44, 7 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rotrac (talk • contribs)

There has been some discussion about the lead of the article Likelihood function. The discussion is at Talk:Likelihood_function#Wording_of_lead. Any recommendations on this would be much welcomed and appreciated. IAmAnEditor (talk) 23:44, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm an Agricultural Economics student looking to improve some of the representations of Agricultural Censuses on Wikipedia.

I was wondering if there was a template which should be followed for these, and Censuses more generally in how they're represented. While this topic in specific is unlikely to merit pages for the individual census years, as is the case with larger censuses of population, I still don't've an idea as to whether or not I'm including enough information in the few edits I have done so far.

As one can see in my edits to Canadian Census of Agriculture, United States Census of Agriculture and Farm Structure Survey (which isn't quite a census technically, but is the methodological basis for the European Census of Agriculture), I'm more or less thinking that a breakdown by Introduction, Overview, History, Methodology, Data Collected, and Use / Publication sections is appropiate - with specific references to Data Collected being of interest, moreso than with a census of population, as it may not be immediately something which the public may understand (the scope of an agricultural census is often differently broader than common expectations).

Does anyone have thoughts on whether this approach is correct? Suggestions of what might want to be incorporated? Or if there is aspects of more general census framing on Wikipedia that I am missing and should incorporate?

Thanks for your responses, Wcconey (talk) 13:31, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I've noticed a pervasive problem in Wikipedia math articles, including in statistics, is that many pages are largely unsourced and possibly original research. I think adding references should be added in Article-related tasks. Wqwt (talk) 05:21, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

As the WikiProject with probably the most articles transcluding this template, does anyone here have a view on the possible conversion of

I don't know the difference between sidebar and footer. For example Economics has both. But it seems fine as is. Wqwt (talk) 03:30, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

If we could measure how many people use that economics sidebar for navigation I doubt we'd find it is being used much at all. How do you get to an article on

national accounting? And like the machine learning bar, it is much too prolifically transcluded for a subject-overview navbar with a thematic illustration. How can it be a helpful introduction to an article on, for example, the income–consumption curve, for the most prominent graph, appearing alongside the lede, to be a graph of supply and demand curves? Bigbluefish (talk

) 10:37, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

I asked this on the article’s talk page but got no response. Throughout the article Mean squared prediction error, shouldn’t every summation sign and every instance of ${\displaystyle \sigma ^{2}}$ and ${\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }}^{2}}$ be multiplied by 1/n? And how about in each of the two right-hand side terms of the first equation in the Estimation section? Loraof (talk) 17:34, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

I’ve gone ahead and changed it. Loraof (talk) 23:35, 28 May 2018 (UTC)