I’m giving a talk to the Statistics students at the University of Central Missouri. Here’s the title and abstract of my talk. Continue reading →

I am working on a project that has a series of files in R and R Markdown, and I need to track down where a particular function was originally defined. In Unix based systems, this is pretty easy to do. Continue reading →

I’m helping to put together three separate classes, Basic data management and analysis with R [SAS / SPSS]. As part of these classes, I need to discuss the history of these programs, because understanding that history will help you better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each statistical package. Here’s a brief history of SPSS. Continue reading →

I’ve been working more on a Monte Carlo study of various Bayesian estimators and it makes me think about certain principles that we statisticians use in experimental design that could help us not just with other people’s laboratory studies, but with Monte Carlo studies, which are our own laboratories. This is a continuation of an earlier blog post. One important principle is variable transformation. We almost always conceptualize and analyze proportions using the logit transformation, and this transformation can help a lot with Monte Carlo studies as well. Continue reading →

I want to run a Monte Carlo analysis of various Bayesian estimators to see how they perform when the prior distribution is “wrong”. I’m like everyone else–I just plunge in and start. But halfway through the Monte Carlo analysis, I realized that I could make my life easier and produce a better quality Monte Carlo analysis if I used basic statistical design principles. Here’s a brief outline of some of these design principles. Continue reading →