I frequently use lattice and ggplot2 to create trellis/faceted graphics. But, I gave up using these packages in a recent application, where I had initially constructed a complex graphic using the base R plotting functions. When I later decided that I wanted a faceted version, there was a dilema: ... [Read more...]

There was an R-help thread in January regarding text in the righthand margin of an R graphic, where the text should be rendered in reading order from top to bottom. The base R function mtext is used to plot text in the margin. But, mtext is only able to render ... [Read more...]

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. ... [Read more...]

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 ... [Read more...]

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 ... [Read more...]

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 ... [Read more...]

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) ... [Read more...]

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 ... [Read more...]

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 ... [Read more...]

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 ... [Read more...]

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 ... [Read more...]

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 [...] [Read more...]

That's a mouthful! I presented this topic to a group of Vandy statisticians a few days ago. My notes (essentially reproduced in this post) are recorded at the Dept. of Biostatistics wiki: HowToBootstrapCorrelatedData. The presentation covers some bootstrap strategies for hierarchically structured (correlated) data, but focuses on the multi-stage bootstrap; ... [Read more...]

useR! 2012 is just around the corner. The deadline for talk and poster abstract submissions is today! Submit your abstract here. [Read more...]

The early registration deadline for useR! 2012 is tomorrow! Visit the Online Registration Website. The fees for registration increase March 1st. [Read more...]

This article linked below and the subsequent comments (some apparently from an Elsevier rep.) are interesting. It's not directly related to R, but is related to open source/science philosophy. Elsevier-funded NY Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney Wants to D... [Read more...]

useR! 2012 has issued a call for abstracts! I've extended the WebSweave concept to offer a tool to create simple abstracts online, including those with markup, which may then be submitted at the conference website. Use the following link for the Simple Abstract Helper. [Read more...]

Mortgage rates are low, considering historical rates for the last 50 years. It may be timely to consider a mortgage refinance. The image above links to a simple tool for exploring mortgage refinance, built using rapache and the yet-to-be-archived yarr package for R. Hence, there are now two mortgage-related calculators on ... [Read more...]

The popular news are reporting [1,2,3,4,5] that the Multi-State Lottery Commission (MUSL) will change the rules for their lottery game Powerball, effective Jan. 15, 2012. I sent an email to the MUSL (at 8:00am Dec, 14th) asking for the new official rules, but haven't received a response yet (as of 10:30am Dec, 16th). ... [Read more...]

This popular article references a report by financial consulting firms that makes a fairly convincing argument (even though they mostly neglect inferential statistics, and some parts of their argument are misleading, or otherwise not convincing) that 401(k) participants who accept "help" from financial experts take less risk and have better ... [Read more...]