Just In Time Design
We don’t perfect design in our programming until we’re sure we’re going to keep it. Here is a link to the article from 2003 that impressed me, which I mentioned in the video.
Math, Programming and The Ultimate Fighter
I track statistics on my blogs, of course, both this one and my personal blog, which often discusses judo and other martial arts. Normally, this blog has three times as many visitors. Despite what graduate students imply, most people are more interested in statistics than in getting knocked down or punched in the face. A…
How do non-technical managers evaluate programmers?
When I was an undergraduate, I argued with my professor about the management theory that said it was not necessary to understand the business to be an effective manager but only to understand management. The example he gave (and that I never accepted) was of a carriage in the park. The driver of the carriage…
Face-smacking errors
Yet again today, I spent a while trying to figure out an error that had me smacking my forehead at the end. Here was the problem, I am testing a fairly simple database – adds records, updates, selects, does some error checking as you enter the data, typical stuff. To test it, I have a…
The hardest errors to find are the things that aren’t there: A PHP example
In my defense, the actual program is longer than this … <?php require ‘connect.php’; // Create variables ; $id = strtoupper(trim($_REQUEST[‘id’])) ; $application_date = $_REQUEST[‘yr_of_apply’] . “-” . $_REQUEST[‘month_of_apply’] .”-“. $_REQUEST[‘day_of_apply’] ; $assessment_date = $_REQUEST[‘yr_of_assess’]. “-” . $_REQUEST[‘month_of_assess’] .”-“. $_REQUEST[‘day_of_assess’] ; $eligibility_date = $_REQUEST[‘yr_eligible’].”-“.$_REQUEST[‘month_eligible’] .”-“. $_REQUEST[‘day_eligible’] ; $ipe_date = $_REQUEST[‘yr_ipe’].”-“.$_REQUEST[‘month_ipe’] .”-“. $_REQUEST[‘day_ipe’] ; $notify_rights =…
Mixed models with SAS Enterprise Guide – Not Really
I was going to use SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3 with SAS On-Demand to do my mixed model analysis, but it did not quite work out. First of all, if like me you are used to doing PROC GLM where each subject is one record, you have to change your dataset to be one where each…
True confessions about documentation
We’re waiting by the phone, um, computer to find that our Kickstarter project is (we hope!) approved. In the meantime, our Chief Marketing Officer asked me why there was a need for documentation, which is one of the expenses that would be funded from the crowd. It’s like this – we started writing a game…
Excel statistics functions – simple answers to simple questions
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…
Can online learning make you more productive?
I’ve always been a bit skeptical of online education. I think I’m a good instructor. I know my subject extremely well, put a lot of time into preparing lectures, class activities and assignments. Having done some online classes, I have found it harder to gauge if students are confused or bored. Those hand-raises on goto…
Local SAS User Groups, mostly in Tweets
Go to your local users group. If you don’t know if you have a local users group in your area, check the sascommunity.org page that lists bunches of them. There are six in California listed on their site and I heard of two others that started very recently that aren’t listed. LABSUG is the Los…