Science is boring! Math is boring! This is the whine of the world’s most spoiled 13-year-old as she does her homework, and I find it hard to argue with her because I have read her textbooks and all of them could be put to a better use as a cure for insomnia or starting a…
When the first computer lab was put into the tribal college where I was a consultant, the professor in charge of the project complained that students were spending time in the lab on Yahoo, MySpace, emailing friends on other reservations, downloading software and all sorts of non-academic activities. He asked what he should do. I…
I was very happy to get an acceptance letter from WUSS telling me that my class proposal for the 2011 conference was accepted. I’m usually happy to get acceptance letters in general but this was particularly nice since I have gotten the first four chapters of my naked mole rat book done and the next…
I admit that I am hardly a typical user for statistical software, given that I had to go online to download a file with less than 7,000 records and less than 500 variables. STILL, I have to say that PSPP was a disappointment in a great many ways. This is NOT to say that it…
When last seen, our heroes were attempting to write a book with the title Beyond SAS Basics: Tips, Statistics and a Naked Mole Rat The first chapter was entitled After the Data Step. The first half of it was posted here earlier which you would know if you were following this blog in the probably…
Any person who claims to know all of SAS is either clinically insane or a liar. However, that is not you. YOU are reading this book. Based on this one fact, I can conclude a couple of things about you. First, you know the basics of SAS. You can code a DATA step. You have…
I wanted to learn how to use smashwords, for reasons completely unrelated to this blog, SAS or statistics, but I thought it would go much faster if I had an actual project to work on. I considered writing a serious book for researchers on SAS Enterprise Guide, but then I decided that I did not…
“Can you explain multicollinearity statistics?” she asked. Why, yes, yes I can. First of all, as noted in the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity, “Multicollinearity is not a life-threatening condition except when a depressed graduate student employs multiple, redundant measures.” What is multicollinearity, then, and how do you know if you have it? Multicollinearity is a…
Question authority. Whenever I hear authoritative statements made that don’t fit with the world I see around me, I try to follow up. How many times have we been told that the U.S. is just terrible in math, we are falling behind educationally, China and India are eating our lunch – deservedly so, because our…
Lately, I’ve been missing some of my former colleagues at the USC Medical School. This is not just because they are super-nice people, which they are, but also because they used to ask for different types of statistics, and I do think variety is the spice of life – except for in marital relationships where…