SMS scnews item created by John Ormerod at Fri 12 May 2017 1218
Type: Seminar
Distribution: World
Expiry: 19 May 2017
Calendar1: 19 May 2017 1400-1500
CalLoc1: Carslaw 173
CalTitle1: The glue that binds statistical inference, tidy data, grammar of graphics, data visualisation and visual inference
Auth: jormerod@1.152.97.42 (jormerod) in SMS-WASM

# Statistics Seminar: Dianne Cook (Monash) -- The glue that binds statistical inference, tidy data, grammar of graphics, data visualisation and visual inference


Abstract:

Buja et al (2009) and Majumder et al (2012) established and validated protocols that
place data plots into the statistical inference framework. This combined with the
conceptual grammar of graphics initiated by Wilkinson (1999), refined and made
popular in the R package ggplot2 (Wickham, 2016) builds plots using a functional
language. The tidy data concepts made popular with the R packages tidyr (Wickham,
2017) and dplyr (Wickham & Francois, 2016) completes the mapping from random
variables to plot elements.

Visualisation plays a large role in data science today. It is important for
exploring data and detecting unanticipated structure. Visual inference provides the
opportunity to assess discovered structure rigorously, using p-values computed by
crowd-sourcing lineups of plots. Visualisation is also important for communicating
results, and we often agonise over different choices in plot design to arrive at a
final display. Treating plots as statistics, we can make power calculations to
objectively determine the best design.

This talk will be interactive. Email your favourite plot to dicook@monash.edu
ahead of time. We will work in groups to break the plot down in terms of the
grammar, relate this to random variables using tidy data concepts, determine the
intended null hypothesis underlying the visualisation, and hence structure it as
a hypothesis test. Bring your laptop, so we can collaboratively do this exercise.

Joint work with Heike Hofmann, Mahbubul Majumder and Hadley Wickham


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