Questions tagged [on-topic]
Use this tag when examining what is on-topic or off-topic, and why, and how to deal with off-topic questions.
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If and how to ask about soliciting domain knowledge relevant to priors
One of the less precisely-defined (mathematically or otherwise) aspects of performing Bayesian inference is assignment of priors based on domain knowledge, and there are plenty of questions on ...
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To what extent are questions about survey methodology and design appropriate?
I was thinking about asking for academic references relative to conducting a survey on the human population that frequents a transit neighborhood (transit neighborhood may be particularly challenging ...
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Are questions about ethical use of statistics on-topic?
A strong majority of the questions I have seen on this site relate to technical aspects of statistics such as mathematics, algorithms, and sample design. I am curious if questions about ethics are on-...
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What Questions are acceptable in the Machine Learning section of Cross Validated?
I posted a question on here recently that was closed:
I was unsure if it fit into this site anyway, so I'm fine with it being closed. But it left me wondering, what is an acceptable Machine Learning ...
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Why are these blog recommendations questions considered off-topic?
There are a few Mathematical Statistics/Statistical Learning Theory blogs I enjoy reading, and wanted to ask on the main site for recommendations of similar theory-focused Statistics/ML blogs, as I ...
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How to adapt this Philosophy.SE question to fit CV on-topic standards?
I asked this question on Philosophy Stack Exchange: Epistemic value of multiple eyewitness accounts: single event vs. multiple events given a fixed number of eyewitnesses?
Intuitively speaking, ...
user365786
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Showing a function source code and asking what it does
I am a statistics newbie and I have recently ported a function or subroutine in fortran into python. But I have no idea what it does. Is it on topic to ask such questions here ? I am looking to find ...
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Is this question appropriate - Is it necessary to report on the step-by-step results from a model-building process?
I would like to ask a question on CrossValidated about statistics reporting, rather than statistical analysis itself. The question is: Is it necessary to report on the step-by-step results from a ...
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Why are questions about "portfolio optimization" considered offtopic?
I noticed a trend where questions about portfolio weight estimation and optimization tend to either be suggested for transferring over to quant SE, or even closed as off-topic.
Here are a few examples:...
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Is it appropriate to ask about plotting/graphing/visualizing data here?
I would like to ask for advice about plotting a growth curve model, preferably using SAS, SPSS or Excel. Is that an appropriate question for CrossValidated?
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Should questions about the statistics profession be added to the scope of CV?
I noticed that a recent question about the statistics profession was closed as off-topic. It clearly does not fall within the listed topics on our help pages so I have no objection to the moderating ...
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Does this question belong here or ELL?
I have the question below. I think it is more about statistics than English. Thus, it would belong here. However, one might argue that it has too little statistical substance to merit posting here, ...
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Help me frame a question on the relevance of the frequentist model to real world applications in a way that it's on topic on CV
It's been a long time since I've been active on CV and I don't want to botch it by asking an off-topic, opinion-based, or duplicate question. Here is my attempt:
How to answer to critiques about the ...
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Would Cross Validated want Machine Learning Theory questions that are no longer on-topic for Stack Overflow?
Over time, a large number of machine learning questions have been asked and answered on Stack Overflow, amassing a significant amount of useful information. However, these questions are unfortunately ...
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Is asking for help finding relevant research off topic?
I have trouble finding relevant research in a specific sub-field. Is it off topic for Cross Validated to either ask for such research or ask for help in finding it? How could I make it a better fit ...
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Closing "software questions"
TL;DR: Recently, it seems to me like we have been a little trigger-happy about closing questions as "only about software/programming". I ask that we please ease off a bit.
Our help page on ...
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Can we ask questions related to R Programming?
Questions related to programming/coding is mostly related to Stackoverflow.
R is a programming language for statistical computing. Can we ask questions related to R-programming??
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Is Cross Validated an appropriate place to ask for examples of meta-analysis done well?
I'm teaching myself how to do meta-analysis, and as a beginner to the subject I would like to read journal article examples of meta-analysis done well.
It's easy enough to find examples of meta-...
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Is it on topic for a question to ask for a canonical example?
I want to ask a question with the title Is there a canonical example demonstrating the difference between predictive and explanatory models?
I have ideas about the body of this question, with some ...
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Is this question about categorical features on-topic?
The question Suggestions on using model in production 1 test at a time was closed as off-topic.
To my mind, the question content is squarely about the generalizability of a specific kind of feature (...
SycoraxMod
- 85.2k
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Is there a machine learning StackExchange?
Is there a research-level machine learning site in the StackExchange universe? I don't like Reddit's formatting system.
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Why is my question about replicating a figure from Hastie et al. not appropriate?
I asked this question earlier today but was quickly put on hold with a generic comment. I can only assume the question is on hold as it has been interpreted as being a coding question. It is clear ...
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Would this dice question be on topic if it were posted or migrated here?
RPG.SE is currently having a bit of a vigorous discussion about this question about dice rolling (meta thereupon), in which this stack was brought up as a potential migrate target. There is a dice ...
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Question about math notation closed as off-topic
The question "What is sigma function in the YOLO object detector?" has been closed as off-topic with the usual explanation:
This question appears to be off-topic because EITHER it is not about ...
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Are questions concerning deployment best practices on-topic?
I have a model built with time series data that I want to deploy. Sadly, I haven't found a lot of resources for this and I wanted to ask how to best approach this. The answer I am hoping for contains ...
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Shouldn't CV be a valid resource on how to implement non-trivial statistical models in different software?
Currently the Help Center > Asking states that questions are on-topic if they're about "statistical analysis, applied or theoretical", and whenever it's about programming "if it needs statistical ...
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This opinion-based question must be closed
The question What must someone know in statistics and machine learning? is not suitable for the stats.SE format because it is primarily opinion-based. I believe that much is obvious on its face.
OP's ...
SycoraxMod
- 85.2k
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Are "stats-review" questions on-topic?
I'm dealing with a question on Stack Overflow that's really a "stats review" -- not technically a code review ("is this code OK?"), but "is this statistical approach OK?"
This strikes me as ...
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Should we remove the "datasets" close reason from the list?
Our recent proposal for adding one more close reason was declined. The reason was that we could re-use the "datasets" reason
Questions about obtaining specific datasets are off-topic on Cross
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TimMod
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Are "What is State of the Art for Machine Learning in X" on topic?
I often need to discern what the State of the Art (SOTA) is for certain Machine Learning Applications, which I currently ask on the Fast.ai forums. For example:
How does Deep Learning deal with ...
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If OP asks for a software referral, and a referral *doesn't* exist, may we answer with the code they asked for?
If an OP asks for a R library recommendation (policy under debate in another meta thread, I realize), and no acceptable recommendation exists, what is the policy regarding writing and posting code ...
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Is this question mentioning Keras off-topic?
Image classification with large images in R keras
OP mentions keras a couple time, but to their credit, they don't include code. I'd like to answer the question, but I wonder if I should comment ...
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Questions asking for statistical package recommendations: how do we differentiate in vs out of bounds for CV?
Recently, I asked for a recommendation for R packages that were capable of doing latent class analysis with mixed indicator types and were capable of doing latent class regression (i.e. treat the ...
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Do we need a canonical thread about stock trading? What would it address?
I've noticed that stock trading is a prominent theme among reinforcement-learning and neural-networks and deep-learning questions. I think this is because (1) stock trading is an easy problem to ...
SycoraxMod
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Overlap with ai.stackexchange and datascience.stackexchange
I found that quite a few tags are present at each of these sites in the SE universe:
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Data Science (DS)
Cross Validated (CV)
For example:
reinforcement-learning (AI, DS, ...
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What is our stance on website recommendation questions?
What is our stance on website recommendation questions? Are they on-topic or off-topic? Assume that the website recommendation pertains to statistics / machine learning.
Example:
Is there any web-...
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Improve closure-to-migrate voting
We often get questions that focus on how to do something using R (or Python, rarely SAS, MS Excel or others), with little to no statistical content. Such questions are off-topic and should be closed.
...
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(How) can I make an on-topic question from this?
I posted this question on Software Recommendations. As it is getting no response, I think that I might try to make a meaningful chart for my friend, in Excel .
Actually, I would prefer someone else ...
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Should I ask this mathematical statistics question here or on math.se?
I would like to ask the following question:
if $M$ is a $m\times n$ constant matrix and $\eta\sim\mathcal{N}(0,I)$, then does $$\mathbf{E}_{\eta\sim\mathcal{N}}\left[\frac{\lVert M\eta\rVert}{\...
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What to do with a question which asks about R packages and how to fit RBF networks
This question
How to fit a RBF network in R?
asks an off-topic question (which R package to use to fit RBF networks) and a question which, while on-topic, is very likely a duplicate. Should I close ...
- 16.7k
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Is optimization off-topic?
I came across this thread today.
Why not use the third derivative?
It has a very good discussion both in the comments and in the answers, yet it was closed as off-topic because it is about ...
SycoraxMod
- 85.2k
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"Help I have some data and need to analyse it what do I dooo?"
I have been on this stackexchange long enough now to see there is quite a lot of questions along the lines of:
Help, I'm a data science intern/amateur statistician and I've been given a load of ...
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Favorite "data analysis" cartoon question should be closed
This question
What is your favorite "data analysis" cartoon?
Should really be closed, as it's sending a negative signal about what is allowed on the site, per the comment:
According to ...
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Should I ask questions about interpreting printouts from a statistical package here or on SO?
There's a function from a statistical package whose printout I'm slightly confused about. Should I ask about it on SO or here? On the one hand, it doesn't have anything to do with coding/programming, ...
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Dealing with "do my professional work for me" questions?
There has been some discussion on CV Meta of how to deal with homework questions and also job-related questions. Either can be unreasonable in certain cases, but the latter really annoy me, since they ...
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Is CV the right site for this question?
I just asked the following question:
What are attention mechanism exactly?
It seems that attention-related questions haven't received answers on this site. Is this the right site for these questions?...
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How to improve the following question
A new user asked this question:
Neural Network for Foreign Exchange Prediction
In my opinion it's quite good as a first question, but it's hard to answer. I'd like the help the OP improve it. ...
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Should the mailing list on structural equation modeling (SEMNET) consider moving to CV?
I am subscribed to SEMNET, a list on structural equation and latent variable modeling, and it is undergoing some sort of an existential crisis. The talk there is about moving to a forum/website -- it ...
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Should questions about comparing the output from different statistical software be on topic here?
For instance, this question asks about why R and SAS give different results in a multi-level model. I think this sort of question is more likely to get an answer here than elsewhere. R list users may ...
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Does this question violate any of the community rules?
I'm new to Cross Validated SE. I've asked this question and got 2 down votes. So, I'm asking if it was an off-topic question or if there is a better way to ask it.
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