April 18, 2026
The journal
May 20, 2025
Course final projects
by Sergiy Nesterko
The course is now concluded, the grades are entered. The final activity of the semester was the final project presentations day, when 16 student teams presented the results of the 10-week class final project. The breadth of topics for the final projects was impressive and was made possible in part by over 15 class partners and collaborators who contributed and supported data-driven challenges for the students.
May 5, 2025
Harvard Stat 221 “Statistical Computing and Visualization”: all lectures online
by Sergiy Nesterko
Stat 221 is Statistical Computing and Visualization. It’s a graduate class on analyzing data without losing scientific rigor, and communicating your work. Topics span the full cycle of a data-driven project including project setup, design, implementation, and creating interactive user experiences to communicate ideas and results. We covered current theory and philosophy of building models for data, computational methods, and tools such as d3js, parallel computing with MPI, R.
May 1, 2025
Critique of an interactive visualization: “Finding love on Craigslist”
by Sergiy Nesterko
This is a T-shirt competition entry by Lo-Hua Yuan. Lo-Hua won the comp this time and is getting a T-shirt, congratulations!
May 1, 2025
Critique of an interactive visualization: “Wealth inequality in America”
by Sergiy Nesterko
This is a winning T-shirt comp submission, by Sidd Viswanathan. Congratulations Sidd!
May 1, 2025
Critique of an interactive visualization: “World’s food consumption”
by Sergiy Nesterko
This is a T-shirt competition entry by Yiqun Zhao. Yiqun won a T-shirt this time, congratulations!
April 29, 2025
Stat 221 T-shirts have arrived!
by Sergiy Nesterko
The class has 6 T-shirt competitions (5 finished and the final one pending) and code performance competitions based on homeworks. All winners get free T-shirts. Today, the T-shirts have arrived and the hardworking competition winners can claim theirs!
April 22, 2025
Critique of an interactive visualization: “How many households have a savings account?”
by Sergiy Nesterko
This is a T-shirt competition submission by Allen Schmaltz.
April 22, 2025
Critique of an interactive visualization: “One day of Wiki edits”
by Sergiy Nesterko
This is a T-shirt competition entry by Kevin Oh. Kevin was the second T-shirt winner for competition 5, congratulations!
April 22, 2025
Critique of an interactive visualization: “The last three months on Foursquare”
by Sergiy Nesterko
This is a T-shirt competition entry by Jay Baxter. Jay won the T-shirt this time, congratulations!
April 14, 2025
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, Parallel Tempering, MPI: lectures 14-19 of Stat 221
by Sergiy Nesterko
Stat 221 is over 75% done! We have learned how to learn about the parameters of complex models with point estimation in the earlier lectures. Lectures 14-19 are mostly about the more computationally intensive full MCMC sampling methods such as Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and Parallel Tempering. We also discussed how Decision Theory treats making decisions based on system parameters and uncertainty about them, and parallelizing computing algorithms with the Message Passing Interface: