I waited until April 3 to post this, so it wouldn't be taken as an April Fool's joke! A recent R News item announces that we now have a bona fide mechanism to create custom connections in R! This makes it possible to implement a custom connection in an R package. Until now, the only
Blog Archives
Identify 2/3 vacation photos, win $5 Starbucks gift card
I have a $5 Starbucks gift card that I simply can't remember to use; I've had it since Christmas. So, I will mail it (within the U.S.A.) to the first commenter who can identify the longitude/latitude (within 5km) where two of these three vacation photos were taken (photos below). ***Update 3/30/2013: locations A and C
Generalized Pairs Plot: It’s about time!
JW Emerson, WA Green, B Schloerke, J Crowley, D Cook, H Hofmann, H Wickham (2013) The Generalized Pairs Plot. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 22(1). Here's a free preprint version. Until this new paper and implementation by Emerson et al., there were no widely available pairs plots that accommodated both numerical and categorical fields.
Simulated Power/Precision Analysis
I cringe when I see research proposals that describe a sophisticated statistical approach, yet do not evaluate this approach in their power/precision/sample size planning. It's often the case that a simplified version of the proposed statistical approach is used instead. Presumably, this is due to the limited availability of power/precision/sample size planning software for sophisticated
Breakthroughs in the sas7bdat Reverse Engineering Effort
Due largely to the work of Clint Cummins, the sas7bdat file format has become a bit less shrouded. In particular, we now know the following: how to detect files with compressed data (and fail graciously) more details about the platform that generated the file (e.g., endianess, OS details) how to read files that were generated
Revised graph for BAC 1% cash rewards
Thanks to Anthony Damico who alerted me to an error in the Bank of America's 1% cash rewards figure in my last post. The plot shows the true reward percentage as a function of purchase amount. A key "feature" of the BoA reward program is that the full 1% is only awarded for purchases in
Bank of America 1% Cash Rewards Aren’t Really 1%
Bank of America (BoA) has a "Cash Rewards" credit card that pays "1% cash back everywhere, every time"1. But if you read the fine print, it's clear that the reward is almost always less than 1%. Here's the relevant sentence from the terms and conditions2: Fractions are truncated at the 100th decimal place, and are
Bayesian credible intervals in the mainstream medical literature
I have sometimes heard complaints from collaborators that it will be impossible to have their work published in the mainstream literature unless a p-value is reported. This post is to report yet another counterexample that was recently published; a meta-analysis for the odds of perioperative bleeding complications in patients taking one of several anticoagulant/antiplatelet drugs.
Update: Parameters as Population Quantities
Some time ago, I had an ineloquent and less-than-cordial online discussion with a commenter on this site, partially about how statisticians define the term "parameter". This post is just to quote a relevant passage from "Bootstrap Methods and Their Application", by Davison and Hinkley (1997), that better articulates a point I had made earlier. 2.1.1
useR! 2012 Deadlines Approaching: Registration, Hotels, Student Scholarships
Forwarded from Frank Harrell: DEADLINES FAST APPROACHING – 8th Annual International R User Conference useR! 2012, Nashville, Tennessee USA Registration Deadlines: Early Registration: Passed Regular Registration: Mar 1- May 12 Late Registration: May 13 – June 4 On-Site Registration: June 12 – June 15 Please note: Nashville is offering several large entertainment events the month
Zero Inflated Models and Generalized Linear Mixed Models with R.
Zuur, Saveliev, Ieno (2012).
