The end is near! At least the semester is coming to an end, so students have crazy expectations like getting marks back for assignments, and administrators want to see exam scripts. Sigh! What has been happening meanwhile in Quantum Forest?

• Tom cracked me up with “…my data is so fucking patchy. I’m zipoissoning the place up like a motherfucker, or something”. I probably need to embark in some zipoissoning, and he was kind enough to send me some links.
• People keep on kicking this guy called “p-value” when he is still unconscious on the floor. Bob O’Hara declares that p-values are evil. Not funny! John Cook reminds us that “The language of science is the language of probability, and not of p-values.” —Luis Pericchi”. Actually, these days the language of Science is English or whatever passes for English in a press release.
• Discussion with Mark about the canonical pronunciation for MCMCglmm: mac-mac-glim, em-see-em-see-glim or Luis’s dumb em-see-em-see-gee-el-em-em. We need a press release from Jarrod Hadfield to clear the air!
• RStudio now supports knitr; I’m looking forward to being able to send email from it. Wait, then it would be like a pretty Emacs.

Unfortunately named Fiat dealer in Southern Brazil. Ideal if you want to zipoisson your way around. Locals told me that it was a German surname, pronounced Fook. Mmh.

• Did you know? There is life beyond R. Pandas keeps on growing (if Python is your thing). Douglas Bates keeps on digging Julia. I ‘discovered’ Bartosz Milewski‘s blog, which I enjoy reading although I understand a small fraction of what he’s taking about. I came across Bartosz while looking for information on using supercomputers.
• Data points: “How do you know you have an ageing economy? Adult nappy sales are more than kids’ nappy sales. That’s Japan now.” tweeted Bernard. “Crap!” was my reaction (nappy = diaper for US readers).
• Feeling frustrated using R? Just go for some language Schadenfreude at Abandon Matlab.
• Going to Auckland? Our agent Mike has just the place to go “La Voie Française (875 Dom Rd) is worth a trip. Great baguettes, $2 flaky croissants, queue out the door”.
• Still shaking in Christchurch. Last Monday I was teaching while we had a 5.2 magnitude quake; we kept on going with the lecture.

And that’s my view of the month from down under Christchurch.