I am happy to announce that our paper entitled “Semi-Markov modeling for cancer insurance” has been accepted for publication in the European Actuarial Journal. Advancements in medicine and biostatistics have already resulted in a better access to insurance for people diagnosed with cancer. This materializes into the “right to be…

Learn how to perform the Kruskal-Wallis test in R (the nonparametric version of the ANOVA) to compare 3 groups or more under the non-normality assumption — Introduction In a previous article, we showed how to do an ANOVA in R to compare three or more groups. Remember that, as for many statistical tests, the one-way ANOVA requires that some assumptions are satisfied in order to be able to use and interpret the results. In particular, the ANOVA…

Learn how to track page views, sessions, users engagement and more Google Analytics data in R with the {googleAnayticsR} R package — Introduction Stats and R has been launched exactly two years ago. Like last year, I think it is a good time to do a review of the past 12 months by sharing some figures about the audience of the blog. This article is not about showing off my numbers, but rather…

Select the most appropriate statistical test based on the number of variables and their types with the help of a flowchart — Being a teaching assistant in statistics for students with diverse backgrounds, I have the chance to see what is globally not well understood by students. I have realized that it is usually not a problem for students to do a specific statistical test when they are told which one to…

Learn how to run multiple and simple linear regression in R, how to interpret the results and how to verify the conditions of application — Introduction Remember that descriptive statistics is a branch of statistics that allows to describe your data at hand. Inferential statistics (with the popular hypothesis tests and confidence intervals) is another branch of statistics that allows to make inferences, that is, to draw conclusions about a population based on a sample. The…

Use the running pace calculator to find your necessary pace and splits based on your expected running time and distance — Introduction If you are a runner yourself, you are certainly aware of how important preparation is before a race. For the preparation of my first marathon, I used to rely on a training plan. This running plan was great, but an important information was missing: the running pace. Most of the…

Learn the structure of a hypothesis test by hand, illustrated by 4 easy steps using the critical value, p-value and confidence interval methods — Descriptive versus inferential statistics Remember that descriptive statistics is the branch of statistics aiming at describing and summarizing a set of data in the best possible manner, that is, by reducing it down to a few meaningful key measures and visualizations — with as little loss of information as possible. In other words, the…

Learn how to track the performance of your blog or website in R by analyzing page views, sessions, users and engagement with the {googleAnayticsR} package — Introduction Stats and R has been launched on December 16, 2019. Since the blog is officially one year old today and after having discussed the main benefits of maintaining a technical blog, I thought it would be a good time to share some numbers and thoughts about it.

I am happy to announce that our paper entitled “ Waiting period from diagnosis for mortgage insurance issued to cancer survivors “ has been published in the European Actuarial Journal. Here is a brief summary of it: Massart (2018) testimonial illustrates the difficulties faced by patients having survived cancer to…