I only visited a few JSM sessions today, as I’ve been focused on preparing for my own talk tomorrow morning. However, I went to several talks in a row which all had a common problem that made me cringe: graphics … Continue reading → [Read more...]

I knew R was versatile, but DANG, people do a lot with it: __ __ … I don’t think anyone actually believes that R is designed to make *everyone* happy. For me, R does about 99% of the things I … Continue reading → [Read more...]

Today a coworker needed some maps showing boundary changes. I used what I learned last week in the useR 2012 geospatial data course to make a few simple maps in R, overlaid on OpenStreetMap tiles. I’m posting my maps and … Continue reading → [Read more...]

First of all, useR 2012 (the 8th International R User Conference) was, hands down, the best-organized conference I’ve had the luck to attend. The session chairs kept everything moving on time, tactfully but sternly; the catering was delicious and varied; … Continue reading → [Read more...]

Just a quick note that I’ve posted the slides, code, and dataset from my useR 2012 talk. I’m having a great time here in Nashville and will write up a conference review soon, with links to the many excellent packages … Continue reading → [Read more...]

Although I am most familiar with R for statistical analysis and programming, I also use a fair amount of SAS at work. I found it a huge transition at first, but one thing that helped make SAS “click” for me … Continue reading → [Read more...]

Today I ran into a double question that might be relevant to other R users: Why can’t I assign a dataframe row into a matrix row? And why won’t my function accept this dataframe row as an input argument? A … Continue reading → [Read more...]

A few friends have asked for self-study resources on learning (or brushing up on) basic statistics. I plan to keep updating this post as I find more good suggestions. Of course the ideal case is to have a good teacher … Continue reading → [Read more...]

I’m preparing “R101,” an introductory workshop on the statistical software R. Perhaps other beginners might find some use in the following summary and resources. (See also the post on resources for teaching yourself introductory statistics.) Do you have obligatory screenshots … Continue reading → [Read more...]

Scientific American has a short article on trends in undergraduate degrees over the past 20 years, illustrated with a great infographic by Nathan Yau. As a big fan of STEM (science, tech, engineering and math) education, I was pleased to … Continue reading → [Read more...]

The setup Dan Meyer, a (former?) math teacher with some extraordinary ideas, has a nifty concept for teaching expected values: “So one month before our formal discussion of expected value, I’d print out this image, tack a spinner to it, … Continue reading → [Read more...]