Hello Medium family, my name is Albert. It has taken me 17 years to find this wonderful site, and I have enjoyed every minute on it. My time here has been spent browsing and writing about my interests: mathematics and statistics. I’ve always considered myself a quantitative person, even from a young age. I loved playing around with numbers in my head and browsing youtube videos to fuel my curiosity. There’s just something about it that is unusually satisfying.
If you’ve taken any sort of calculus course, you will have undoubtedly been introduced to the derivative. It is one of the most important aspects of mathematics, and it serves as the basis for all topics in calculus.
We define the derivative as the rate of change of a function with respect to a variable, usually x. However, as always, mathematicians have come to represent this definition in a much more math-y way, which is called the limit definition.
With the publication of my last article, I have officially surpassed 1,000 views on Medium. For some of the more experienced writers on this platform, this number may not seem to have much significance. However, to me, this achievement represents an important milestone. It tells me that my efforts have not gone to waste, as well as the fact that they have had some impact on my audience. I always enjoy when I see claps or the occasional comment on one of my stories.
The main motivational factor throughout my 2–3 month journey so far has been to create the…
The concept of probability touches practically all aspects from our lives. In fact, we base many of the decisions we make on the probability of events we perceive to be the most beneficial. Therefore, it is crucial to obtain a decent understanding of probability theory and learn how to apply it to other problems.
Usually, the first things that comes to mind when we think about probability are dice or cards. After all, both of these objects are often associated with games, gambling, or anything with chance involved. Interestingly enough, the term “chance” actually quite accurately sums up the definition…
Since its creation, calculus has undoubtedly changed the world of mathematics for the better. It was a brilliant and new way of thinking, exploring the principles of continuous change. You may have heard of some of the calculus’s many topics, including differentiation, integration, and so on. But, have you ever considered how impactful these concepts really are? Many people end up just cramming techniques into their heads, whether it be the power rule or integration by parts, without actually understanding how useful they can be. However, I am here to tell you that calculus has impacts in all sorts of…
Experiments are the foundation of statistics, allowing us to make predictions, inferences, and more. As a result, they must be methodically conducted, or else findings may stray far from the truth. In this article, I will explain the fundamentals and key terms to help familiarize oneself with the concept of experimental design.
All well-designed experiments, regardless of topic, will have a response variable and an independent variable. The response/dependent variable is the variable of interest, which will be measured in the experiment. The response variable is affected by another variable called the independent variable, or a factor. Let’s look at…
Since joining medium back in January, I have thoroughly enjoyed writing about the topics I enjoy. I had nothing against writing in the past, but I could immediately tell that I did not need to force myself to write about stuff like math.
However, while writing has been fun, I have found myself slightly absorbed with my statistics. Especially early on, it was extremely difficult to stay away from my stats page. I still do not understand why, but there is just something extremely satisfying about watching the bar graph for each day rise as more views accumulate. But, if…
Descriptive statistics encompasses the branch of statistics that discusses summaries of a data set. Typically, this category of statistics can be broken down into two subsections: central tendency and variability. Both of these subsections are extremely important, as they can help us understand features and characteristics of different sets of data. One thing to note is that descriptive statistics is different from inferential statistics, as we are not making any predictions with descriptive statistics. If you would like to learn more about statistical inference, check out my article below.
Now, let’s get into the understanding the ideas of central tendency…
2020 was hard on everybody. The pandemic effectively put the world on hold, prompting the need for proper health precautions. If you’re like me, you were probably very scared and anxious during that time. I stayed home a lot, and I finished my second semester of school online. You would think that being at home would allow for lots of time to stay productive, since there really isn’t much to do. However, I often found myself distracted, whether it be binging Netflix shows or just spending too much time browsing social media. As time passed though, I’ve found certain methods…
Even without being introduced to statistics, one may recognize the shape of the curve shown above. It is often perceived as a bell curve, but not many people actually know about its importance. The normal distribution is vital to the aspect of statistical inference, as it is often one of the conditions that even allow us to perform things like hypothesis tests. That is to say, if the probability distribution of a random variable is not normal, statistical inferences can not be made.
A normal probability distribution is symmetric around the mean, and the spread of the distribution is determined…
17 || High School Junior || stats & math