Someone stopped by today with a power calculation and I asked what software they used. They showed me something I had not seen before, a program developed by the Department of Biostatistics at Vanderbilt University (more specifically, William Dupont and Walton Plummer). The Vanderbilt Biostatistics Department is run by Frank Harrell, so you can be pretty sure that anything that they develop will be high quality. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: September 2015
PMean: A non-technical answer to why we need Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Someone was looking for examples of illustrative examples to help explain to people without a statistical background how MCMC methods can be applied to help solve real world problems. I offered up some general advice and some of my own research as an example. Continue reading
Recommended: Research vs Quality Improvement
I ran across a one page handout in PDF format that discussed the difference between research and quality improvement. It was written from the perspective of the IRB (Institutional Review Board) at UMKC. It’s a nice summary, although the topic is a bit more complex than a single page handout might imply. This is a good starting point for deciding what type of study you want to do. Continue reading
PMean: Finding interesting peer-reviewed articles that illustrate statistical tests
Someone asked how do you find peer-reviewed articles that use simple statistical tests so your students can see the structure of papers that report on statistical analyses. I do this a lot for this blog and for lectures that I give, so I wrote up some suggestions. Continue reading
PMean: What problems does introversion cause for a statistical consultant?
Someone posed an interesting question on the Statistics Consulting message board of the American Statistical Association. To paraphrase, her question was what sort of difficulties would an introvert have in statistical consulting and how do you teach those introverted consultants to overcome those problems. Here’s what I wrote. Continue reading