Dec 6: Statistics in Practice - Your Weekly Briefing

This week we look at the casino business – in particular, the odds on slots. In our course spotlight, we start looking at some of the great stuff starting in at the beginning of the new year.

In January, you can get started with basic statistics or biostatistics, start our certificate program or degree programs in analytics, get introduced to R programming or Python programming, or start a Bayesian statistics or operations research mastery.

See you in class!

– Peter Bruce,
Chief Academic Officer, Author, Instructor, and Founder

The Institute for Statistics Education at Statistics.com

Slots

Detecting a Slots Payout Difference of 2%

Playing slot machines, gamblers can typically expect to win back 85% – 95% of their money. How long would a person have to play to distinguish between a 93% return and a 95% return? […]

Of Note

Google Zooms Out on Microtargeting

Google recently announced that it would further limit its election ads to

audience targeting based on age, gender, and general location (postal code level)
context targeting (i.e. showing ads based on the content being viewed)

Up to this point, the application of predictive modeling to “microtarget” individuals or small groups of individuals, well-entrenched in the digital marketing sphere, had […]

Book Review

Big Data in Practice, by Bernard Marr

This short book is essentially an enriched list of 45 examples of how companies have used big data analytics. Marr sticks to high level generalities, and the book is in the spirit […]

Problem of the Week

Gambling Puzzle

QUESTION: A gambler playing against the “house” in a game like roulette or slots adopts the rule “Play until you win a certain amount, then stop.” Will this ensure against player losses? What will be its effect on the house’s profit?

ANSWER: […]

Course Spotlight

ALL IN JANUARY!

From novice to expert, make January 2020 your starting point for boosting your statistical skills:

COURSES

Introductory Statistics (starts Jan. 3)
Biostatistics (starts Jan. 3)
Regression Analysis (starts Jan.17)
Statistical Programming in R or Python (starts Jan 17)

MASTERIES (3 courses)

Predictive Analytics Mastery (starts Jan 17)
Bayesian Statistics Mastery (starts Jan 10)
Operations Research Mastery (starts Jan 3)
IRT – Rasch Mastery (starts Jan 24)

CERTIFICATE PROGRAMS (10 courses)

Analytics for Data Science (get started Jan. 17 with Predictive Analytics)
Programming for Data Science (get started Jan 17 with Statistical programming in R or Python)
Biostatistics (get started Jan. 17 with Biostatistics)
Social Science Statistics (get started Jan 17 with Regression, or Logistic Regression Jan 10)

DEGREES

Bachelors Degree in Analytics and Data Science (start Jan 17 with Predictive Analytics) ¹
Masters Degree in Analytics in Data Science (start Jan 6)²

¹ Take Statistics.com courses and transfer credit to Thomas Edison State University (TESU) via ACE Credit
² In partnership with TESU, apply directly to TESU