I admit that some months I am so busy that I toss Significance out without reading it – this is the magazine of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and Royal Statistical Society. No, I don’t pile up things to read later because I never do read them later. Anyway … taking two days off work,…
According to my partner, Dr. Erich Longie, the Dakota believe that how one acts immediately after the death of a loved one, is how a person will act for the rest of his/her life. Thus, when someone dies, it is a very bad idea to get drunk, sleep around or other dysfunctional ways of dealing…
Having received email from readers who believe that Spirit Lake: The Game is exploitative or disrespectful of Native Americans, I asked the individual who designed the Level 5 problem shown in my blog post of November 18 to respond in a guest post. What I Hope to Accomplish with a Math Game for Native American…
The past couple of weeks, I’ve been hearing my friends from Turtle Mountain and Spirit Lake talk about the election in North Dakota. I was particularly interested because this was the one election that Nate Silver predicted incorrectly. He had Heitkamp down by 3.9 percent, and yet she won. I have no idea how Silver’s…
On the long list of things that irritate me, few score higher than people who have “an idea” for a start-up and are then going to find “you know, people” to code it for them. I was cheered up when I ran across this youtube video where AngelList founder Naval Ravikant advises the winners of…
Here is a math problem: Hoksinato and Tasunka Ska are going to steal horses. They could steal the scrub ponies from the edge of the camp. The last 15 times warriors from the tribe tried to steal scrub ponies, they got away 12 times and were caught and tortured 3 times. If they…
Lots of random people give me advice. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because: I really do try very hard to listen to other people openly and, I go out of my way to meet new people. Neither of these traits come naturally to me and I have to put a lot of effort into…
I may expand this into a series on software products in general. Years ago, I wrote a post on the similarities between the Rocket Scientist and SAS Enterprise Guide. Neither made a great first impression, both revealed their brilliance over time, and I am still with both lo these many years later. Experiencing both SAS…
My problem as a professor has been how to fit everything into the schedule that students really should learn given that universities are under pressure to require less and less. There isn’t an easy answer. Unlike back when I was attending graduate school, riding in on my pterodactyl, most students are now working full-time, which…
I read an interesting question years ago, on the JMP blog, “What are 5-9 software packages you can’t live without?” That reminded me that when I started this blog almost four years ago, I wrote a post with the title “Nine software packages I can’t live without” . I never finished publishing the list, I started another list…