I have learned not to be too smart for my own good. Yesterday was an example. My client provides many different types of services to the consumers who use their program. There are about 15 different options, from counseling to on-the-job training to assistive technology. We want to get the total number of services each…
Been working with SAS a lot lately to get the data in shape for a new client. Here’s one of the problems I ran across. We want to get the average pay rate for people who got jobs as a result of our client’s services. However, when one of the people they served did not…
When people ask me what type of statistical software to use, I run through the advantages and disadvantages, but always conclude, “Of course, whatever you choose is going to give you the same results. It’s not as if you’re going to get a F-value of 67.24 with SAS and one of 2.08 with Stata. Your…
What must everyone know and why must everyone know that? This was one of the two central questions in Dr. J.T. Dillon’s course on Curriculum and Instruction, which I thought was going to be a colossal waste of time. After all, I was going to be a statistician, why would I need a course on…
Two incidents happened lately where results I expected to be the same turned out to be different. The first one involved two Excel files sent to me from one of my favorite clients. (You’re all my favorite clients!) One of the files was an Excel file on a Mac. The other was created on a…
I’m working on the SAS Naked Mole Rat book and was writing about residual variance. It occurred to me that I just threw in a chart and assumed that people would know what residual variance was and moved right along. This reminds me of the time the rocket scientist had a sign outside of his…
Yesterday, I was at Griffith Observatory with the world’s most spoiled 13-year-old. We were there because she is in a Summer Scholars program that is designed to provide academic enrichment for high-achieving girls. Unfortunately, not being as high-achieving as we might like, she got a B- on her latest test, and given that the teacher…
Before we went to Arlington, VA to get our hands on the National Indian Education Study , my colleague, Dr. Erich Longie, hypothesized that schools that had more cultural activities would have lower academic achievement. In addition to being an old friend, Dr. Longie is president of Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc. , a published author…
Any time you add another layer of complexity you better have a damn good reason. I’m often skeptical of proponents of both Item Response Theory and multiple imputation procedures, not because either IRT or MI is a bad thing in itself but because its inclusion makes data analysis and reporting more complicated. At the National…
I’m currently at a seminar in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics. I’ve seen the notices for these a lot of times over the years, and always thought, “Well, that looks interesting” but never applied to go, primarily because although your expenses are paid, there is no stipend, so that is…