Jake Vanderplas - Statistics for Hackers - PyCon 2016.mp4
Why Hacker News recommends it
It is recommended to programmers who want to learn statistics through simulation rather than memorized formulas.
What it is
Jake Vanderplas's PyCon 2016 talk shows how sampling-based methods such as simulation, shuffling and bootstrapping make statistics intuitive. His pitch is that if you can write a for-loop, you can do statistics.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends pixelmonkey · 2017-08 · on “Python Data Science Handbook”
We're using this book for a "book club" at work. Doing 1 chapter every 2 weeks. Chapter 1 covers Jupyter, 2 covers numpy, 3 pandas, 4 matplotlib, and 5 machine learning. We just made it through the first 4 chapters and it lays a good foundation for those libraries. I suspect chapter 5 is the meatiest and most interesting chapter, which covers scikit-learn and machine learning techniques. It is a long chapter so we will spend a month on it. I recommend combining this book with McKinney's Pandas book[1] and the author's excellent YouTube presentations at PyCon and PyData. Start with "Statistics for Hackers"[2] by Jake VanderPlas and then look for his others. [1]: [LINK] [2]: [this video]
Recommends auxym · 2020-06 · on “Ask HN: Recommendations for applied engineering and math books for programmers?”
You might enjoy this talk "statistics for hackers" (in case statistics is not included in your data science knowledge): [this video] For structural beam analysis (ie, from mechanical and civil engineering) check out this textbook on the direct stiffness method: [LINK] Unfortunately, the accompanying code (MASTAN2) is not open source and runs in Matlab. Still, it's a decent first step if you want to move to full-on Finite Element methods, which require much heavier math (real analysis) to really grasp.
Recommends armanboyaci · 2025-03 · on “Statistical Formulas for Programmers (2013)”
>Being able to apply statistics is like having a secret superpower. I totally with this sentence. BUT If you ask for my opinion, merely knowing a list of statistical formulas is not very helpful. Most of the time, people don’t remember the underlying assumptions, so there is a fair chance they will use them in inappropriate situations. I recommend watching these two YouTube videos. The presenters advocate using simulation/bootstrapping/shuffling methods instead of memorizing formulas. Jake Vanderplas - Statistics for Hackers [this video] John Rauser - Statistics Without the Agonizing Pain [LINK]
Cites faitswulff · 2017-08 · on “Feynman on Fermat's Last Theorem (2016)”
Feynman's approach seems very reminiscent of Jake Vanderplas's Statistics for Hackers talk[0] as opposed to the purely theoretical physicist approach that the author notes at the end. [0]: [this video]