Machine learning is a popular topic in data analysis and modeling. Many different machine learning algorithms have been developed and implemented in a variety of programming languages over the past 20 years. In this article, we first provide an overview of machine learning and clarify its difference from statistical inference. Then, we review…

Cluster analysis is a set of statistical methods for discovering new group/class structure when exploring data sets. This article reviews the following popular libraries/commands in the R software language for applying different types of cluster analysis: from the stats library, the kmeans, and hclust functions; the mclust library; the poLCA…

Stan is a free and open-source C++ program that performs Bayesian inference or optimization for arbitrary user-specified models and can be called from the command line, R, Python, Matlab, or Julia and has great promise for fitting large and complex statistical models in many areas of application. We discuss Stan from users' and developers'…