Exploratory Data AlexHoly shit, this made me realize I have *tremendous* room for improvement in my data visualizations https://stackoverflow.blog/2022/03/03/stop-aggregating-away-the-signal-in-your-data/
Brandon Rohrer@alexkyllo fantastic post. This is my kind of #DataViz . “Embrace the complexity of your data.” Thanks Alex.
AW@brohrer @alexkyllo Agreed. I'm only halfway through and already I feel like I'm learning an entirely new approach to take. Also can't wait to learn how to work w the tools they used to make these visuals.
@austin_bradley @brohrer Observable Plot looks really interesting, though I'm confident one could make plots of similar quality with ggplot2. On the message of the piece, I've long been in a "simplify as much as possible" mindset--aggregating the data to the point that the analysis is just simple comparisons between two to several groups--and this really challenges me on that.
@austin_bradley @brohrer I found the article in a link from this site, which also challenges my approach of using stock standard generalized linear models for everything, and recommends defaulting to using splines and nonparametric smoothers, and *never* discretizing data with quantiles or presenting it in tables (!!) https://hbiostat.org/rflow/analysis.html
@alexkyllo @austin_bradley oh wow, so many gems here. I’ve always had the best best luck keeping as close to the raw data as possible, making as few aggregations and modeling simplifications as I can get away with.
Sometimes it’s necessary to collapse it in order to communicate it. And once you have a story, you can aggregate the hell out of it to streamline your storyline. But for me aggregation and modeling is mostly a necessary evil.
@brohrer @austin_bradley I never really even understood what something like LOESS was useful for, but now I see how it fits into EDA. I think I need to go read RMS now, I've seen so much good stuff from Harrell on Cross Validated and Twitter
Joran@alexkyllo @brohrer @austin_bradley Ok! The finding out what LOESS is useful for serious made me decide to read all linked material tonight 😃.
Thanks for sharing! Can't wait 😊