## Contextual Measurement Is a Game Changer

December 22, 2014
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Adding a context can change one's frame of reference:Are you courteous? Are you courteous at work? Decontextualized questions tend to activate a self-presentation strategy and retrieve memories of past positioning of oneself (impression manag...

## One-way ANOVA with fixed and random effects from a Bayesian perspective

December 22, 2014
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This blog post is derived from a computer practical session that I ran as part of my new course on Statistics for Big Data, previously discussed. This course covered a lot of material very quickly. In particular, I deferred introducing notions of hierarchical modelling until the Bayesian part of the course, where I feel it … Continue reading One-way ANOVA with fixed and random effects from a Bayesian perspective

## One-way ANOVA with fixed and random effects from a Bayesian perspective

December 22, 2014
By

This blog post is derived from a computer practical session that I ran as part of my new course on Statistics for Big Data, previously discussed. This course covered a lot of material very quickly. In particular, I deferred introducing notions of hierarchical modelling until the Bayesian part of the course, where I feel it … Continue reading One-way ANOVA with fixed and random effects from a Bayesian perspective

## Research benefits of feminism

December 22, 2014
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Unlike that famous bank teller, I’m not “active in the feminist movement,” but I’ve always considered myself a feminist, ever since I heard the term (I don’t know when that was, maybe when I was 10 or so?). It’s no big deal, it probably just comes from having 2 big sisters and growing up during […] The post Research benefits of feminism appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and…

## On how meetings and conference calls are disruptive to a data scientist

December 22, 2014
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Editor's note: The week of Xmas eve is usually my most productive of the year. This is because there is reduced emails and 0 meetings (I do take a break, but after this great week for work). Here is a repost of one of our first entries explaining how meetings and conference calls are particularly disruptive in

## On deck this week

December 22, 2014
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Mon: Research benefits of feminism Tues: Using statistics to make the world a better place? Wed: Trajectories of Achievement Within Race/Ethnicity: “Catching Up” in Achievement Across Time Thurs: Common sense and statistics Fri: I’m sure tha...

## Holiday Haze

December 22, 2014
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Your dedicated blogger is about to vanish in the holiday haze, presumably returning early in the new year. I hope to see you at the Boston ASSA Penn party. (I promise to show up this time. Seriously.) Meanwhile, all best wishes for the holidays.[Photo ...

## Sunday data/statistics link roundup (12/21/14)

December 22, 2014
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James Stewart, author of the most popular Calculus textbook in the world, passed away. In case you wonder if there is any money in textbooks, he had a \$32 million house in Toronto. Maybe I should get out of MOOCs and into textbooks. This post on medium about a new test for causality is making the

## Is there a Kindle edition of Practical Data Science with R?

December 21, 2014
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We have often been asked “why is there no Kindle edition of Practical Data Science with R on Amazon.com?” The short answer is: there is an edition you can read on your Kindle: but it is from the publisher Manning (not Amazon.com). The long answer is: when Amazon.com supplies a Kindle edition readers have to … Continue reading Is there a Kindle edition of Practical Data Science with R? →…

## It’s Too Hard to Publish Criticisms and Obtain Data for Replication

December 21, 2014
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Peter Swan writes: The problem you allude to in the above reference and in your other papers on ethics is a broad and serious one. I and my students have attempted to replicate a number of top articles in the major finance journals. Either they cannot be replicated due to missing data or what might […] The post It’s Too Hard to Publish Criticisms and Obtain Data for Replication appeared…

## Merry Christmas

December 21, 2014
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Based on The DO loop, since I wanted a fractal Christmas tree and there is no point in inventing what has been made already. Besides, this is not the first time this year that I used R to do what has been done in SAS.Code# http://blogs.sas.com/content/...

## Derailment: Faking Science: A true story of academic fraud, by Diederik Stapel (translated into English)

December 21, 2014
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Diederik Stapel’s book, “Ontsporing” has been translated into English, with some modifications. From what I’ve read, it’s interesting in a bizarre, fraudster-porn sort of way. Faking Science: A true story of academic fraud Diederik Stapel Translated by Nicholas J.L. Brown Nicholas J. L. Brown (nick.brown@free.fr) Strasbourg, France December 14, 2014 Foreword to the Dutch edition […]

## Sokal: “science is not merely a bag of clever tricks . . . Rather, the natural sciences are nothing more or less than one particular application — albeit an unusually successful one — of a more general rationalist worldview”

December 20, 2014
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Alan Sokal writes: We know perfectly well that our politicians (or at least some of them) lie to us; we take it for granted; we are inured to it. And that may be precisely the problem. Perhaps we have become so inured to political lies — so hard-headedly cynical — that we have lost our […] The post Sokal: “science is not merely a bag of clever tricks . .…

## Functional Principal Component Analysis

December 20, 2014
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$Functional Principal Component Analysis$

In mathematics, a general principle for studying an object is always from the study of the object itself to the study of the relationship between objects. In functional data analysis, the most important part for studying of the object itself, i.e. one functional data set, is functional principal component analysis (FPCA). And for the study […]

## Functional Principal Component Analysis

December 20, 2014
By
$Functional Principal Component Analysis$

In mathematics, a general principle for studying an object is always from the study of the object itself to the study of the relationship between objects. In functional data analysis, the most important part for studying of the object itself, i.e. one functional data set, is functional principal component analysis (FPCA). And for the study […]

## Global Learning XPrize

December 20, 2014
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Looking for team members  in order to compete in the XPrize in global learning challenge (learning.xprize.org). This competition involves the development of literacy learning tablet software that can be used independently by children. There is 15 ...

## Statistics and Computer Science: For Whom the Hand Wrings, It Wrings for Me

December 20, 2014
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Lately there has been much hand wringing about the future of statistics. My hands have also been wrung, and I expect to continue to wring them. My own worries are several. These can be categorized as scientific concerns, naming rights, legacy/wasting ...

## The Use of Sampling Weights in Bayesian Hierarchical Models for Small Area Estimation

December 19, 2014
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All this discussion of plagiarism is leaving a bad taste in my mouth (or, I guess I should say, a bad feeling in my fingers, given that I’m expressing all this on the keyboard) so I wanted to close off the workweek with something more interesting. I happened to come across the above-titled paper by […] The post The Use of Sampling Weights in Bayesian Hierarchical Models for Small Area…

## Defense by escalation

December 19, 2014
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Basbøll has another post regarding some copying-without-attribution by the somewhat-famous academic entertainer Slavoj Zizek. In his post, Basbøll links to theologian and professor Adam Kotsko (cool: who knew there were still theologians out and about in academia?) who defends Zizek, in part on the grounds that Zizek’s critics were being too harsh. Kotsko writes of […] The post Defense by escalation appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social…

## Interview with Emily Oster

December 19, 2014
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Emily Oster is an Associate Professor of Economics at Brown University. She is a frequent and highly respected contributor to 538 where she brings clarity to areas of interest to parents, pregnant woman, and the general public where empirical research is conflicting or difficult to interpret. She is also the author of the popular new

## The Geometry of Classifiers

December 19, 2014
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As John mentioned in his last post, we have been quite interested in the recent study by Fernandez-Delgado, et.al., “Do we Need Hundreds of Classifiers to Solve Real World Classification Problems?” (the “DWN study” for short), which evaluated 179 popular implementations of common classification algorithms over 120 or so data sets, mostly from the UCI … Continue reading The Geometry of Classifiers → Related posts: Does Balancing Classes Improve Classifier…

December 18, 2014
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Editor's Note: This is a repost of a previous post on our blog from 2012. The repost is inspired by similar issues with statistical illiteracy that are coming up in allergy screening and pregnancy screening.  I just was doing my morning reading of a few news sources and stumbled across this Huffington Post article talking about

## Message to Booleans: It’s an additive world, we just live in it

December 18, 2014
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Boolean models (“it’s either A or (B and C)”) seem to be the natural way that we think, but additive models (“10 points if you have A, 3 points if you have B, 2 points if you have C”) seem to describe reality better—at least, the aspects of reality that I study in my research. […] The post Message to Booleans: It’s an additive world, we just live in it…