## Trajectories of Achievement Within Race/Ethnicity: “Catching Up” in Achievement Across Time

December 24, 2014
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Just in time for Christmas, here’s some good news for kids, from Pamela Davis-Kean and Justin Jager: The achievement gap has long been the focus of educational research, policy, and intervention. The authors took a new approach to examining the achievement gap by examining achievement trajectories within each racial group. To identify these trajectories they […] The post Trajectories of Achievement Within Race/Ethnicity: “Catching Up” in Achievement Across Time appeared…

## Di Cook is moving to Monash

December 24, 2014
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I’m delighted that Professor Dianne Cook will be joining Monash University in July 2015 as a Professor of Business Analytics. Di is an Australian who has worked in the US for the past 25 years, mostly at Iowa State University. She is moving back to Australia and joining the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics in the […]

## All I want for Chrismukkah is that critics & “reformers” quit howlers of testing (after 3 yrs of blogging)! So here’s Aris Spanos “Tallking Back!”

December 24, 2014
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This was initially posted as slides from our joint Spring 2014 seminar: “Talking Back to the Critics Using Error Statistics”. (You can enlarge them.) Related reading is Mayo and Spanos (2011) Filed under: Error Statistics, fallacy of rejection, Phil6334, reforming the reformers, Statistics

## Using statistics to make the world a better place?

December 23, 2014
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In a recent discussion involving our frustration with crap research, Daniel Lakeland wrote: I [Lakeland] really do worry about a world in which social and institutional and similar effects keep us plugging away at a certain kind of cargo-cult science that produces lots of publishable papers and makes it easier to get funding for projects […] The post Using statistics to make the world a better place? appeared first on…

## Review: Wainer, Picturing the Uncertain World

December 23, 2014
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Picturing the Uncertain World by Howard Wainer is a book about statistics and statistical thinking, aided by visual depictions of data. Each article in the collection starts by stating a question or phenomenon, which is then investigated further using some clever statistics. I bought the book after Scott Murray pointed me to it as the source … Continue reading Review: Wainer, Picturing the Uncertain World

## Cloudy and red

December 23, 2014
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Note: I'm traveling during the holidays so updates will be infrequent. Reader Daniel L. pointed me to a blog post discussing the following weather map: The author claimed that many readers misinterpreted the red color as meaning high temperatures when...

## What does Flatland have to do with Haskell?

December 23, 2014
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Edwin Abbott's 1884 novella, Flatland, recounts the misadventures of a square that lives in a two-dimensional world called "Flatland". In this story, the square has a dream where he visits a one-dimensional world (Lineland) and unsuccessfully tries to educate the… Continue reading →

## 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 ...