@xek tweeted that “Almost everyone who does twitter stats is a fucking moron”. I was going to say that no one really knows what the hell is going on when it comes to social media, but I believe his estimate adds a greater level of precision. For example, the tweet reach tool tells me that…
Since it’s the international year of statistics, I felt a little guilty that I have not done that much in the way of statistics lately. However, I think that is true whether you are an engineer, statistician, biologist or whatever, within a few years after your Ph.D. (at most!) you find lots of your time…
Very often, researchers (including me) use multiple-choice tests to collect data to determine whether or not an intervention has worked. Does the Dance Your Way to Math curriculum really result in higher test scores? Does Lollipop Spelling reduce the number of spelling errors? and on and on. I remember being told that statistics to be…
Wednesday, I went to a workshop, Mixed Models for Professors. It was a combination of discussion of the mathematics of mixed models, using SAS Enterprise Guide and examples for teaching. Since I was too lazy to actually take notes, I just tweeted it. Three useful pieces of advice, even if you don’t like my notes:…
“I’m XX years old and I’ve never used (insert any statistical technique here). Why do I need to know this?” I’ve heard some version of the above on every topic from linear regression to structural equation models, and at every age from teenagers to executives in their sixties. I’ve even made comments like that myself….
It never ceases to amaze me that intelligent people will spend huge amounts of time doing a literature review, designing elaborate theories, generating elegant hypotheses, selecting a three-stage stratified random sample, performing multivariate analyses, and their measures on which this brilliant study rests are some questions they made up with their three best friends over…
I have colleagues who hate Excel with a passion. Why, they demand to know, would ANYONE use Excel for statistics when there are so many options that are so much better? Actually, I don’t find the Excel add-on for statistics that terrible, but that isn’t even the topic of this post. I use Excel because…
Most people probably have been thinking about Christmas preparations and not so much the Common Core Standards. I’ve actually been thinking about these standards a lot lately. The more I think about them, the less comfortable I feel. Let me explain, first of all, that the common core standards are an effort to get states…
If you have a mad desire to do logistic regression with SAS On-Demand with SAS Enterprise Guide, here is a movie that shows how to do it. It is a .avi file so you may want to just download it and run it on your PC. Here is why the movie is not all that…
Let’s face it, 90% of everything on the Internet is crap. This is especially true when it comes to educational resources. So I cannot believe I did not come across these until now. Maybe they were just lost in the swamp of effluvia. I came across so many good resources lately that I am planning…