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Ctrl-F "Gauss" 0 matches Ctrl-F "Markov" 0 matches The fuck? Only the single most beautiful result in the field. Please don't misunderstand me, the presen

by apathy 10y ago

Ctrl-F "Gauss" 0 matches Ctrl-F "Markov" 0 matches The fuck? Only the single most beautiful result in the field. Please don't misunderstand me, the presentation is great and it is quite practical, I just wish people would remember that very smart individuals have been coming along for pretty much the entirety of humanity's existence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%E2%80%93Markov_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%E2%80%93Markov_theorem The proof is hinted at in the writeup, so why not link to it?

darkhorn 10y ago
I don't understand why they down vote you. Probably because they think that they know Statistics. Programmers at Hacker News always think that they are the master mind of Statistics. In fact they know almost nothing about Statistics. For example if you don't test for constand variance and independance of variances then you cannot graduate from Department ofStatistis. But here they down vote you for knowing real Statistics.
- minimaxir 10y ago
  > But here they down vote you for knowing real Statistics. That is quite literally a No True Scotsman argument. GP was likely downvoted since the Ctrl-F meme adds nothing to the discussion.
  - apathy 10y ago
    Personally, I felt that the omission was rather important. When the first year's worth of many statistics programs can be condensed into one beautiful theorem, which is centuries old, I feel it's disrespectful to one's forebears to ignore it. However, I get the impression that once the meme sensor goes off, any links remain unvisited and reading comprehension may suffer. So I learned something here, too. I'd edit the original to remove the meme, but since I can't do that at this point, readers will have to try and control their Internet Police tendencies and read a few sentences. Or not. Rather a shame, hopefully the author of the piece will fix it and this will all be superfluous.
    - eliben 10y ago
      [post author here] FWIW I did not find your original comment particularly offensive, and didn't downvote (I think years on the internet have made me resilient). The Gauss-Markov theorem is very cool. However, as I discovered while doing some reading for this article - whole books were written on linear regression. The amount of information to convey is almost limitless and I didn't want to turn this one into a multi-part article. I simply wanted to write down (code and math) the things I find most pertinent to understanding how the regression works.
      - apathy 10y ago
        Fair enough! If you felt like adding it as a footnote, great, if it doesn't fit the purpose, that's fine too. And to reiterate, it's a beautifully laid out, concise, high-content piece of writing. I should have phrased it differently; how it's said may matter more than what's said. Essentially I wrote a reaction post but, given the amount of revising and reanalysis/examination-of-assumptions I've been doing lately, I ought to have said something like: "This piece is an excellent tutorial on how to do linear regression, why gradient descent is fundamental (far beyond OLS or fixed effects models), and so forth. However, if you are interested in why all of these things are possible in the multivariate case as well as the simple bivariate case, you might find the Gauss-Markov theorem to be a 'light bulb' moment." Because that's how it happened to me. Cheers, and thanks for writing a great piece that I will be pointing others towards.
        eliben 10y ago
        Thanks for the feedback and the useful reference. I'll definitely add the Gauss-Markov theorem to my to-look-in-depth-at-later list and may write up about it at some future point.
    - dguaraglia 10y ago
      To be honest, the attitude doesn't help. Did the author omit something that you find important? Well, you can point it out saying something like "hey, nice informational article, but I would have included X, Y and Z." It's basically what you said, but in a more constructive manner.
- sctb 10y ago
  Please don't make such assumptions and generalizations about the HN community. It predictably derails the thread and distracts from substantive discussion.
klodolph 10y ago
I'm just not sure that it makes sense to add that to the article. The article focuses on the "how" of linear regression, and presents an interesting case for using non-analytic solutions, even though the analytic solution is easy. The Gauss-Markov theorem is more of a "why". I can imagine enjoying a discussion about why we use linear regression, or why regularization is important, or the "why" of many things, but those are simply different articles. The fact that an article doesn't mention a beautiful result in the field is hardly a valid criticism of the article.

by apathy 10y ago

darkhorn 10y ago

I don't understand why they down vote you. Probably because they think that they know Statistics. Programmers at Hacker News always think that they are the master mind of Statistics. In fact they know almost nothing about Statistics. For example if you don't test for constand variance and independance of variances then you cannot graduate from Department ofStatistis. But here they down vote you for knowing real Statistics.

minimaxir 10y ago
> But here they down vote you for knowing real Statistics. That is quite literally a No True Scotsman argument. GP was likely downvoted since the Ctrl-F meme adds nothing to the discussion.
- apathy 10y ago
  Personally, I felt that the omission was rather important. When the first year's worth of many statistics programs can be condensed into one beautiful theorem, which is centuries old, I feel it's disrespectful to one's forebears to ignore it. However, I get the impression that once the meme sensor goes off, any links remain unvisited and reading comprehension may suffer. So I learned something here, too. I'd edit the original to remove the meme, but since I can't do that at this point, readers will have to try and control their Internet Police tendencies and read a few sentences. Or not. Rather a shame, hopefully the author of the piece will fix it and this will all be superfluous.
  - eliben 10y ago
    [post author here] FWIW I did not find your original comment particularly offensive, and didn't downvote (I think years on the internet have made me resilient). The Gauss-Markov theorem is very cool. However, as I discovered while doing some reading for this article - whole books were written on linear regression. The amount of information to convey is almost limitless and I didn't want to turn this one into a multi-part article. I simply wanted to write down (code and math) the things I find most pertinent to understanding how the regression works.
    - apathy 10y ago
      Fair enough! If you felt like adding it as a footnote, great, if it doesn't fit the purpose, that's fine too. And to reiterate, it's a beautifully laid out, concise, high-content piece of writing. I should have phrased it differently; how it's said may matter more than what's said. Essentially I wrote a reaction post but, given the amount of revising and reanalysis/examination-of-assumptions I've been doing lately, I ought to have said something like: "This piece is an excellent tutorial on how to do linear regression, why gradient descent is fundamental (far beyond OLS or fixed effects models), and so forth. However, if you are interested in why all of these things are possible in the multivariate case as well as the simple bivariate case, you might find the Gauss-Markov theorem to be a 'light bulb' moment." Because that's how it happened to me. Cheers, and thanks for writing a great piece that I will be pointing others towards.
      - eliben 10y ago
        Thanks for the feedback and the useful reference. I'll definitely add the Gauss-Markov theorem to my to-look-in-depth-at-later list and may write up about it at some future point.
  - dguaraglia 10y ago
    To be honest, the attitude doesn't help. Did the author omit something that you find important? Well, you can point it out saying something like "hey, nice informational article, but I would have included X, Y and Z." It's basically what you said, but in a more constructive manner.
sctb 10y ago
Please don't make such assumptions and generalizations about the HN community. It predictably derails the thread and distracts from substantive discussion.

klodolph 10y ago

I'm just not sure that it makes sense to add that to the article. The article focuses on the "how" of linear regression, and presents an interesting case for using non-analytic solutions, even though the analytic solution is easy. The Gauss-Markov theorem is more of a "why". I can imagine enjoying a discussion about why we use linear regression, or why regularization is important, or the "why" of many things, but those are simply different articles. The fact that an article doesn't mention a beautiful result in the field is hardly a valid criticism of the article.