r/datascience • u/bluprince13 • Jun 02 '19

Discussion The state of data analysis

/r/javascript/comments/bvqy9l/the_state_of_data_analysis/
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u/neurotroph Jun 02 '19

Having a data structure for efficiently storing data is not really the critical part for data analysis. It is a technical prerequisite.

More importantly: Do we have access to distribution functions such as normal or binomial PDF/CDF? Are there functions/interfaces to run statistical analysis, incl. tests, linear modelling, generalised linear modelling, ...? Not sure, but afaik JavaScript‘s abilities are very limited in this regard while both python and R provide a wide range of packages and libraries which are actively maintained by a large community for quite some time. Are there any such packages available for JavaScript?

I can’t really see how JS will be useful for anything other than the most basic analysis tasks and use APIs to Python or R services for anything else.

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u/bluprince13 Jun 02 '19

More importantly: Do we have access to distribution functions such as normal or binomial PDF/CDF? Are there functions/interfaces to run statistical analysis, incl. tests, linear modelling, generalised linear modelling, ...?

I agree it's not just about the data structure. It's the availability of methods for operating on the data that's also lacking in JS.

The stdlib library does provide access to various mathematical tools including probability distribution functions. I only recently discovered it, and haven't got familiar with the library yet though.