## Twelve posts from 2014 that deserve a second look

January 12, 2015
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I began 2015 by compiling a list of popular articles from my blog in 2014. Although this "People's Choice" list contains many interesting articles, some of my favorites did not make the list. Today I present the "Editor's Choice" list of articles that deserve a second look. I've highlighted one […]

## “Only those samples which fit the model best in cross validation were included” (whistleblower) “I suspect that we likely disagree with what constitutes validation” (Potti and Nevins)

January 12, 2015
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So it turns out there was an internal whistleblower in the Potti scandal at Duke after all (despite denials by the Duke researchers involved ). It was a medical student Brad Perez. It’s in the Jan. 9, 2015 Cancer Letter*. Ever since my first post on Potti last May (part 1), I’ve received various e-mails and phone calls from people wishing to confide their inside […]

## The State of Information Visualization, 2015

January 12, 2015
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It seems to be a foregone conclusion that 2014 was not an exciting year in visualization. When we recorded the Data Stories episode looking back at 2014 last week (to be released soon), everybody started out with a bit of a downer. But plenty of things happened, and they point to even more new developments in 2015. If this … Continue reading The State of Information Visualization, 2015

## Econometrics vs. Ad Hoc Empiricism

January 11, 2015
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In a post in 2013, titled "Let's Put the "ECON" Back Into Microeconometrics", I complained about some of the nonsense that is passed off as "applied econometrics". Specifically, I was upset about the disconnect between the economic model (if there is o...

## Some Applications of Item Response Theory in R

January 11, 2015
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The typical introduction to item response theory (IRT) positions the technique as a form of curve fitting. We believe that a latent continuous variable is responsible for the observed dichotomous or polytomous responses to a set of items (e.g., multipl...

## Mostly Harmless Econometrics?

January 11, 2015
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I've had Angrist-Pischke's Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion (MHE) for a while, but I just got around to reading it. (By the way, a lower-level follow-up was just published.)There's a lot to like about MHE. It'...

## “Epidemiology and Biostatistics: competitive or complementary?”

January 11, 2015
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Mohammad Mansournia writes: I have a 20 minute lecture on “Epidemiology and Biostatistics: competitive or complementary?” at Tehran University of Medical Sciences in the next month. I should mention the difference between an epidemiologist and a biostatistician and their competitive or complementary roles in public health. I am wondering if you have any thoughts on […] The post “Epidemiology and Biostatistics: competitive or complementary?” appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal…

## Multivariate analysis of death rate on the map of Europe

January 11, 2015
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Eurostat has information on death rates by cause and NUTS 2 region. I am trying to get this visually displayed on the map. To get there I map all causes to three dimensions via a principal components analysis. These three dimensions are subsequently tr...

## Wow—this is much more impressive than anything Frank Flynn ever did!

January 11, 2015
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This is what I call a rogue sociologist. The post Wow—this is much more impressive than anything Frank Flynn ever did! appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.

## Optimal Design of Experiments

January 11, 2015
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$Optimal Design of Experiments$

The first colloquium speaker at this semester, professor Wei Zheng from IUPUI, will give a talk on “Universally optimal designs for two interference models“. In this data explosive age, people are easy to get big data set, which renders people difficult to make inferences from such massive data. Since people usually think that with more […]

## Optimal Design of Experiments

January 11, 2015
By
$Optimal Design of Experiments$

The first colloquium speaker at this semester, professor Wei Zheng from IUPUI, will give a talk on “Universally optimal designs for two interference models“. In this data explosive age, people are easy to get big data set, which renders people difficult to make inferences from such massive data. Since people usually think that with more […]

## A completely reasonable-sounding statement with which I strongly disagree

January 10, 2015
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In the context of a listserv discussion about replication in psychology experiments, someone wrote: The current best estimate of the effect size is somewhere in between the original study and the replication’s reported value. This conciliatory, split-the-difference statement sounds reasonable, and it might well represent good politics in the context of a war over replications—but […] The post A completely reasonable-sounding statement with which I strongly disagree appeared first on…

## ARDL Modelling in EViews 9

January 9, 2015
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My previous posts relating to ARDL models (here and here) have drawn a lot of hits. So, it's great to see that EViews 9 (now in Beta release - see the details here) incorporates an ARDL modelling option, together with the associated "bounds testin...

## Passing of Sonia Klein

January 9, 2015
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For friends in the area: We have been informed of more sad Klein news.  KLEINSonia Edith Adelson. January 8, 2015, of Gladwyne, PA. Wife of the late Lawrence Klein. Mother of Hannah Klein, Rebecca (James) Klein Kennedy, Rachel (Lyle) Klein, and Jo...

## Planning my class for this semester: Thinking aloud about how to move toward active learning?

January 9, 2015
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I’m teaching two classes this semester: - Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys (in the political science department, but the course has lots of statistics content); - Statistical Communication and Graphics (in the statistics department, but last time I taught it, many of the students were from other fields). I’ve taught both classes before. I […] The post Planning my class for this semester: Thinking aloud about how to move…

## Figuring out what data supports the argument, and what is just window-dressing

January 8, 2015
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That is the question in my head when I read an article like USA Today's "Jobless Claims Fall, Suggests Strong Hiring". (link) The headline makes the connection between newly-released jobless claims data and the conclusion of "strong hiring". But it turns out the new data is merely window-dressing, and the conclusion is based on longer-term trends. Here is the new data, as reported by the USA Today reporter: applications for…

## Testing, testing, testing!

January 8, 2015
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R testthat unit tests with GitHub, Travis-CI continuous integration and the covr package for Coveralls code coverage. I’ve been working pretty hard on getting the ggRandomForests package wrapped up so I can work on some other projects that have as… Continue reading →

## Link to: Probable Points and Credible Intervals, Decision Theory

January 8, 2015
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See Rasmus Bååth's excellent blog post about Bayesian decision theory here.

## “Life Paths and Accomplishments of Mathematically Precocious Males and Females Four Decades Later”

January 8, 2015
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Hmmmm . . . I think that, by “males and females,” they mean “boys and girls.” Anyway, I was interested in this paper (by David Lubinski, Camilla Benbow, and Harrison Kell) because . . . I’m one of the kids in the study. I was 11 years old at the time. What’s happened since then? […] The post “Life Paths and Accomplishments of Mathematically Precocious Males and Females Four Decades…

## Another release day: ggRandomForests V1.1.3

January 8, 2015
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Continuing progress with the vignettes mean bug fixes in the code. Plus I’m presenting the regression random forest vignette to the stats group here tomorrow. http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ggRandomForests/index.html I’ve got another blog post percolating that will detail the biggest change in this… Continue reading →

## DDH Now in Chinese

January 8, 2015
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For my Chinese readers:A Chinese version of the Diebold-Doherty-Herring risk management book just appeared. Interesting surprise. I knew nothing about it until it arrived in the snail mail, just as with the earlier Chinese version of the Dieb...

## On the Brittleness of Bayesian Inference–An Update: Owhadi and Scovel (guest post)

January 8, 2015
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Houman Owhadi Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Control and Dynamical Systems, Computing + Mathematical Sciences California Institute of Technology, USA   Clint Scovel Senior Scientist, Computing + Mathematical Sciences California Institute of Technology, USA    “On the Brittleness of Bayesian Inference: An Update” Dear Readers, This is an update on the results discussed […]

## Probable Points and Credible Intervals, Part 2: Decision Theory

January 7, 2015
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“Behind every great point estimate stands a minimized loss function.” – Me, just now This is a continuation of Probable Points and Credible Intervals, a series of posts on Bayesian point and interval estimates. In Part 1 we looked at these...