## Computing Power Curves

November 5, 2014
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In a recent post I discussed some aspects of the distributions of some common test statistics when the null hypothesis that's being tested is actually false. One of the things that we saw there was that in many cases these distributions are "non-c...

## Time varying causality in n=1 experiments with applications to newborn care

November 5, 2014
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We just had our second son about a week ago and I've been hanging out at home with him and the rest of my family. It has reminded me of a few things from when we had our first son. First, newborns are tiny and super-duper adorable. Second, daylight savings time means gaining an extra hour

## “The Firth bias correction, penalization, and weakly informative priors: A case for log-F priors in logistic and related regressions”

November 5, 2014
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Sander Greenland sent me this paper that he wrote with Mohammad Ali Mansournia, which discusses possible penalty functions for penalized maximum likelihood or, equivalently, possible prior distributions for Bayesian posterior mode estimation, in the context of logistic regression. Greenland and Mansournia write: We consider some questions that arise when considering alternative penalties . . . […] The post “The Firth bias correction, penalization, and weakly informative priors: A case for…

## Tidbits from the Books that Defined S (and R)

November 5, 2014
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Why R? Because S! R is the open source implementation (and a pun!) of S, a language for statistical computing that was developed at Bell Labs in the late 1970s. After that, the implementation of S underwent a number of major revisions documented in ...

## Binning data by quantiles? Beware of rounded data

November 5, 2014
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In my article about how to create a quantile plot, I chose not to discuss a theoretical issue that occasionally occurs. The issue is that for discrete data (which includes rounded values), it might be impossible to use quantile values to split the data into k groups where each group […]

November 5, 2014
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Since my last post on the seasonal adjustment problems at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, I’ve been working closely with people within the ABS to help them resolve the problems in time for tomorrow’s release of the October unemployment figures. Now that the ABS has put out a statement about the problem, I thought it […]

## 538 election forecasts made simple

November 4, 2014
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Nate Silver does a great job of explaining his forecast model to laypeople. However, as a statistician I've always wanted to know more details. After preparing a "predict the midterm elections" homework for my data science class I have a better idea of what is going on. Here is my best attempt at explaining the ideas of

## Social research is not the same as health research: Macartan Humphreys gives new guidelines for ethics in social science research

November 4, 2014
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In reaction to the recent controversy about a research project that interfered with an election in Montana, political scientist Macartan Humphreys shares some excellent ideas on how to think about ethics in social science research: Social science researchers rely on principles developed by health researchers that do not always do the work asked of them […] The post Social research is not the same as health research: Macartan Humphreys gives…

## Phase plane analysis in R

November 4, 2014
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The forthcoming R Journal has an interesting article about phaseR: An R Package for Phase Plane Analysis of Autonomous ODE Systems by Michael J. Grayling. The package has some nice functions to analysis one and two dimensional dynamical systems. As an...

## Central and Non-Central Distributions

November 3, 2014
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Let's imagine that you're teaching an econometrics class that features hypothesis testing. It may be an elementary introduction to the topic itself; or it may be a more detailed discussion of a particular testing problem. We're not talking here about a...

## Make your own hotly criticised circle graph!!!

November 3, 2014
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Make your own hotly criticized circle graph! The recent critical post on R-bloggers has got me wanting to make my own bubble graphs despite the popular criticism of the graph. After some attempts I have produced something that looks similar but needs s...

## Car crash stats revisited: My measurement errors

November 3, 2014
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Last week, I created revised versions of graphs of car crash statistics by state (including an interactive version), from a post by Mona Chalabi at 538. Since I was working on those at the last minute in the middle of the night, to be included as an example in a lecture on creating effective figures […]

## Let’s Do Some MORE Hierarchical Bayes Choice Modeling in R!

November 3, 2014
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R enables us to "test drive" statistical models by running simulations and analyzing actual data. We can look at the output and get some sense of how the whole thing works. The goal is to provide a realistic application that is not too difficult to fol...

## My talk today at the University of Michigan, 4pm at the Institute for Social Research

November 3, 2014
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Generalizing from sample to population Andrew Gelman, Department of Statistics, Columbia University We’ve been hearing a lot about “data” recently, but data are generally a means to an end, with the goal being to learn about some population of interest. How do we generalize from sample to population? The process seems a bit mysterious, especially […] The post My talk today at the University of Michigan, 4pm at the Institute…

## Puissance et tests statistiques (simples)

November 3, 2014
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$\theta$

Pour comprendre la notion de puissance dans un test statistique, reprenons Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences de Jacob Cohen. Comme il le rappelle Fisher (dans The Design of Experiments) ne souhaite pas “prouver” qu’une hypothèse (appelée H_0) est valide, mais il espère, en réalité, rejeter l’hypothèse en question (c’est ce que rappellent d’ailleurs Hubbard et Bayarri en 2003). Autrement dit, supposons que l’on cherche à faire un test…

## On deck this week

November 3, 2014
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Mon: My talk today at the University of Michigan, 4pm at the Institute for Social Research Tues: Social research is not the same as health research: Macartan Humphreys gives new guidelines for ethics in social science research Wed: “The Firth bias correction, penalization, and weakly informative priors: A case for log-F priors in logistic and […] The post On deck this week appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and…

## On deck this month

November 3, 2014
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My talk today at the University of Michigan, 4pm at the Institute for Social Research Social research is not the same as health research: Macartan Humphreys gives new guidelines for ethics in social science research “The Firth bias correction, penalization, and weakly informative priors: A case for log-F priors in logistic and related regressions” I’m […] The post On deck this month appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and…

## Recent additions to the SAS/IML file exchange

November 3, 2014
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It has been three months since the introduction of the SAS/IML File Exchange, so I thought I'd give a short update on recent submissions and activity. The web site administrators have created an easy-to-remember shortcut to the File Exchange: http://communities.sas.com/sas-iml-file-exchange There have been eight new articles submitted to the File […]

## Sunday data/statistics link roundup (11/2/14)

November 3, 2014
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Better late than never! If you have something cool to share, please continue to email it to me with subject line "Sunday links". A DrivenData is a Kaggle-like site but for social good. I like the principle of using data for societal benefit, since there are so many ways it seems to be used for nefarious purposes

## A Tribute to Lawrence R. Klein

November 2, 2014
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(Remarks given at the Klein Legacy Dinner, October 24, 2014, Lower Egyptian Gallery, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.)I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Larry Klein, who helped guide, support and inspire my career f...

## How generous has the international community’s Ebola response been?

November 2, 2014
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Discussion on generosity of international donors. How generous has the international community’s Ebola response been?

## Confusing Charts

November 2, 2014
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Today's on-line edition of The New Zealand Herald includes an article titled "Junior rugby putting little kids in harm's way". The article included two charts, presented one after the other, and explicitly intended to be viewed as a a pair. Here t...

## Ray Could Write

November 2, 2014
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Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. . . . You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: For chess makes nothing happen: it survives In the […] The post Ray Could Write appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social…