Author Archives: pmean

Recommended: Blind analysis: Hide results to seek the truth

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This paper advocates something I would call a triple blind, keeping the doctor, the patient, and the statistician who analyzes the data in the dark as to which treatment group is which. This avoids problems where the people analyzing the data will either consciously or subconsciously manipulate the data to get a preferred result. Interesting idea, though it represents an awful amount of work to pull it off. Continue reading →

Recommended: Launch a Shiny App on Your Own Server in 4 Steps

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It’s very easy, apparently, to set up your own server to run Shiny apps (Shiny is a web based method for interacting with R code). If you have set up Amazon Web Services, then it is even easier. Here is a detailed account of how to do this. Once I get my own Shiny server going, I will let you know. Continue reading →

Recommended: Why be an independent consultant?

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I might as well recommend something that I wrote. This is a short article in the Amstat News, a monthly newsletter of the American Statistical Association. I talk about all the reasons you wouldn’t want to be an independent consultant and the one big reason why you would–being in control. Continue reading →

Recommended: PheKB. A knowledge base for discovering phenotypes from electronic health records

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Some of the work I am doing right now could be characterized as discovering phenotypes from electronic health records. So when one of my co-workers mentioned this database, I thought “Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy!” This is a list of validated algorithms for various systems, and typically refers to a peer-reviewed publication. So once I get my stuff published, I’m heading here next. Continue reading →

Recommended: Medicare Claims Synthetic Public Use Files (SynPUFs)

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provides researchers with access to Medicare claims data, which is a wonderful resources. But you have to sign a restrictive agreement before they will give you this data and you have to pay a non-trivial amount of money to get the data. Fair enough, because CMS has to guarantee patient confidentiality among other things. But what if you want to “play” with the data before taking the plunge? Thankfully, CMS has provided to the general public a synthetic (read fake) data set that has the same data structure. This allows you to prototype your programs on the synthetic data and then transition easily to the real data. Continue reading →