Earlier this month, IBM Press and Pearson have published my book titled: Getting Started with Data Science: Making Sense of Data with Analytics. You can download sample pages, including a complete chapter. There are 104 pages in the sample. You can also watch a brief interview about the book recorded earlier ... [Read more...]

In the world of big data and real-time analytics, Microsoft users are still living with the constraints of the bygone days of little data and basic numeracy.If you happen to use Microsoft Excel for running Regressions, you will soon realize your limits:  The Windows version of Excel 2013 permits no ... [Read more...]

In the world of big data and real-time analytics, Microsoft users are still living with the constraints of the bygone days of little data and basic numeracy.If you happen to use Microsoft Excel for running Regressions, you will soon realize your limits:  The Windows version of Excel 2013 permits no ... [Read more...]

Are you in Montreal and curious about big data? Well here is your chance to attend a session about the same at Concordia University on Tuesday, Nov. 03 at 6:00 pm.www.BigDataUniversity.com, which is an IBM-led initiative is running meetups across North... [Read more...]

The Canadian newspaper, Globe and Mail, is a leader in diction and style, but it may need improvement in the ‘grammar of graphics’.Globe’s recent depiction of metropolitan economic growth in the series Off the Charts was way off the mark. The chart plotted the current and forecasted GDP ... [Read more...]

Stata 14 has just been released. The new and big thing with version 14 is the introduction of Bayesian Statistics. A wide variety of new models can now be estimated with Stata by combining 10 likelihood models, 18 prior distributions, different types of outcomes, and multiple equation models. Stata has also made available a 255... [Read more...]

R is great when it works. Not so much, when it doesn’t. Specifically, this becomes a concern when the packages are not fully illustrated in the accompanied help documentation, and the author/s of the package don’t respond (in time).I am not suggesting that the package authors ... [Read more...]

R is great at accomplishing complex tasks. Doing simple things with R though takes some effort. Consider the simple task of producing summary statistics for continuous variables over some factor variables. Using Stata, I’d write a brief one-liner to get the mean for one or more variables using another ... [Read more...]

Earlier this weekend (Dec. 7, 2013), mnlogit was released on CRAN by Wang Zhiyu and Asad Hasan ([email protected]) claiming that mnlogit uses “parallel C++ library to achieve fast computation of Hessian matrices”. Here is a comparison of mnlogit with mlogit by Yves Croissant whose package seems to be the ... [Read more...]

The recent elections in Pakistan on May 11 were a great success by all means. In spite of the threats for violence by Al-Qaeda and its local franchises in Pakistan against those who would vote, millions of Pakistanis indeed stepped out to vote for an elected government. The Election Commission of ... [Read more...]

The second edition of Michael Cawley's The R Book is available from Wiley. According to the publisher, the new edition boasts the following features:"Features full colour text and extensive graphics throughout.Introduces a clear structure with numbered... [Read more...]

Making choices is inherently human. We choose between brands of cereal or amongst candidates in an election. At times, choices may be influenced by the characteristics of the decision maker, such as age, income and sex. Choices may also be influenced by the attributes of competing alternatives, such as the ... [Read more...]

We are searching for a graduate student to assist us on a very short assignment about sample selection biases and Heckman Probit models. The help is not needed for estimating the models, but instead for reviewing the scenarios where the use of such models is theoretically appropriate or otherwise. For ... [Read more...]

The Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto has an opening for a research support specialist to assist with monitoring current research projects and to provide assistance with econometric/statistical analysis and training.Requi... [Read more...]

Data, data, every where Nor any byte to think The world today is awash with data. Corporations, governments, and individuals are busy generating petabytes of data on culture, economy, environment, religion, and society.  While data has become abundant and ubiquitous, data analysts needed to turn raw data into knowledge are ... [Read more...]

The Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University is offering a one-day, hands–on workshop on Structural Equation Modelling. The workshop focuses on SEM theory and applications using R and Amos. Instructors: Professor Richard Michon and Christine Buske When: July 11, 2012 (8:30 to 3:30 pm) Where: TRS 3-099 (55 Dundas Street West, 9th ... [Read more...]

A recent Globe and Mail column points out that by 2018 in the United States alone there will be a shortfall of 190,000 specialists with deep analytical talent. It is good to see that the mainstream media is waking up to the need for applied training in data analytics. At the management ... [Read more...]

Services of a teaching assistant (TA) are required for a course in Applied Retail Research at Ryerson University in Toronto. The course will run from January to April 2012. Experience with statistical analysis  using R is required. For details on the course, please click HERE. To apply or read more about ... [Read more...]

Are students' teaching evaluations influenced by instructors' looks? ggplot2 may help find the answer.The recent release of RcmdrPlugin.KMggplot2 has made ggplot2 available to those who prefer GUI to the command line interface. With the new plugin for ... [Read more...]

Stata 12 has just been announced. The software will start shipping by the end of July.  A key new feature introduced in the new version is the module for structural equation models (SEM), a staple tool in marketing, psychology, and several other research disciplines.LISREL and AMOS have been the two ... [Read more...]