Shaping data with sampling distributions

If you’ve ever taken an introductory statistics course, you were probably taught that theoretical distributions (such as the ones we will discuss in this section) are a way to describe the central tendency and variability of a given numeric variable. Depending on the situation, it’s often more appropriate to use one distribution over the other. Although this is an accurate summary of probability distributions, it’s important to understand why we use them, and how you should think about them in a data science context (instead of that of a social sciences context, which is often how traditional introductory statistics classes are taught).

Probability distributions

Probability distributions are fundamental concepts in statistics and probability theory that describe the likelihood of various outcomes in a random experiment or process. In the world of data science, these distributions play a crucial role in modeling and...