Category Archives: Statistics

PMean: Do you need to name your function arguments in R?

This page is moving to a new website.

If you program anything in R, you’ll end up calling a lot of functions. You pass your data or your constants to these functions, and you can do it in one of two ways. You can either pass the data/constants in the order in which the function expects the arguments or you can match each data/constant value with a particular argument name. This came up in the context of a question: do I need to save everything using

save.image(file=”foo.RData”)

or can I save it with

save.image(“foo.RData”)? Continue reading →

PMean: My work on a CTSA grant

This page is moving to a new website.

I’m on a Clincal and Translational Science Award (CTSA) research grant (5UL1TR000001-05, formerly 1U54RR031295-01A1), which is pretty cool. My name is even mentioned a few times in the grant. I thought that as I plan what I would do for this grant, I would see what the grant promised and write down what, exactly, that those promises mean. As I talk with various people (especially Russ Waitman, who is supervising my work on this grant), I will revise and update my plans. Still, I thought it would be valuable to put some thoughts down now, both to help me focus on what I should be doing and to offer an early draft of those ideas to the various people that I will end up interacting with. Continue reading →

PMean: SAS University. It’s SAS and it’s free

This page is moving to a new website.

I am teaching a class, Introduction to SAS, that I helped design, but one where another faculty member did all the heavy lifting. I used to teach SAS classes, and I even helped organize a regional SAS conference, but stopped abruptly in 1998. So I’m relearning SAS and one thing that is helping a lot is a product called SAS University which allows you to use SAS for non-commercial purposes for free. Here’s how SAS University works. Continue reading →

PMean: Another big data publication

This page is moving to a new website.

I dislike the term “big data” because it implies a class of problems that are immune from normal statistical considerations. I will admit that certain concepts such as the p-value become meaningless when you have millions of observations. But other concepts, like selection bias become even more important for big data.

Anyway, I now have a second publication that is directly tied to the big data movement. Continue reading →

PMean: My research interests in 450 characters or less.

This page is moving to a new website.

I am currently looking for a full-time position. I have been part-time since 2008, because of child care issues. That will change in July 2018 when my wife retires. She’s looking forward to retirement, but I’m the sort of person who will leave my office only in a coffin. Anyway, I’ve updated my resume and written statements on teaching philosophy and on research interests. Those are up in a special spot on my blog, but I also wanted to add a blog entry with a recent request to summarize my research interests in 450 characters or less. Good grief! Any worse, and I could post it on Twitter. Anyway here it is. Continue reading →