Introduction In the third installment of my series of criticisms of NHST, I focused on the notion that a p-value is nothing more than a one-dimensional representation of a two-dimensional space in which (1) the measured size of an effect and (2) the precision of this measurement have been combined in such ... [Read more...]

[Note to the Reader: This is a much rougher piece than the previous pieces because the argument is more complex. I ask that you please point out places where things are unclear and where claims are not rigorous.] In this fourth part of my series of criticisms of NHST, I’... [Read more...]

Introduction Continuing on with my series on the weaknesses of NHST, I’d like to focus on an issue that’s not specific to NHST, but rather one that’s relevant to all quantitative analysis: the destruction caused by an inappropriate reduction of dimensionality. In our case, we’ll be ... [Read more...]

Introduction This is my second post in a series describing the weaknesses of the NHST paradigm. In the first post, I argued that NHST is a dangerous tool for a community of researchers because p-values cannot be interpreted properly without perfect knowledge of the research practices of other scientists — knowledge ... [Read more...]

Introduction Over my years as a graduate student, I have built up a long list of complaints about the use of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) in the empirical sciences. In the next few weeks, I’m planning to publish a series of blog posts, each of which will articulate ... [Read more...]

Ph.D candidate in sociology Ethan Fosse just switched from Stata to doing 100% of his analysis with R. His reasons? If you want to do Bayesian analysis or graph modeled coefficients (or work with complex data structures more generally), then R is much easier than Stata due to the object-oriented ... [Read more...]

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating and complex disease with an unknown cause — and for which there is currently no cure. The SUNY Buffalo is home to one of the leading multiple sclerosis (MS) research centers in the world, and as reported in Healthcare IT News, the research team is ... [Read more...]

Bob Muenchen has recently updated his report on the popularity of statistical software. With the updated analysis, we see that the R community remains as strong as ever: the number of contributed R packages continues its exponential growth rate, R maintains its dominance in online discussion, and has 20x the ... [Read more...]

The Google Summer of Code project provides funding for students to write and contribute code to open-source projects of interest to Google. And given that R is widely used at Google, it's certainly a project of significant interest. So for the fifth year running the R Project will mentor students ... [Read more...]

The slides and replay for Dr Sanjiv Das's webinar, Using R for Analyzing Loans, Portfolios and Risk: From Academic Theory to Financial Practice are now available. I've embedded the slides below: they tell a great story of how Das, after being mistaken for the then-CEO of Citibank (with whom he ... [Read more...]

Revolution R Enterprise 5.0, which we announced last week, is now available for free download to students and faculty at academic institutions worldwide. If you've downloaded Revolution R Enterprise via the academic program before and are on the mailing list, you will have already received an email with download instructions; if ... [Read more...]

Kevin Goulding is working on a Master’s degree in Applied Economics at Montana State University, and offers 10 reasons why grad students should choose R for statistical analyses, homework problems, and thesis research: R is free, and lets grad students escape the burdens of commercial license costs. R has really ... [Read more...]

For students planning to attend the annual worldwide R user conference, useR! 2011, travel grants are available to help defray the cost of attending the conference in the UK. CRISM is offering bursaries for accommodation and conference fees, and Revolu... [Read more...]

Like many academics, Arthur Charpentier thinks a lot about publishing papers in journals. Specifically, we wondered if there was a way to figure out which journal was the best place to publish his next paper and have it accepted: I was wondering if there were clusters of journals, i.e. ... [Read more...]

Every academic field seems to develop a set of generic insults based on their intellectual toolkit. Here are two examples I hear often: Probabilists and Statisticians: “I think that’s an interesting case, but it’s in a set with measure zero.” Economists: “X group’s behavior is clearly rent-seeking.” ... [Read more...]

For the third year running, the Google Summer of Code program has sponsored a number of students working with R, and has again resulted in several new contributions expanding R in various fields. Dirk Eddelbuettel, who coordinated the R-related projects for GSoC in 2010, summarized the results, with details about the ... [Read more...]

The Windows version of our latest enterprise distribution of R, Revolution R Enterprise 4.0, is now being delivered to subscribers and is also available for free download for members of the academic community. Revolution R Enterprise 4.0 is a major update, and includes many new and improved features: Based on R 2.11.1, the ... [Read more...]

Hic sunt dracones used to be placed on maps, as a way to denote a dangerous or otherwise unexplored territory. We might as well write it all over R-related material used in introductory classes, because students seems to be really (…)Read the rest of this entry » [Read more...]

G Jay Kerns has published a 400+ page introductory text on Probability and Statistics. All of the examples and illustrations are done using R (as Jay puts it, "The people at the party are Probability and Statistics; the handshake is R") so if you want to brush up on your probability ... [Read more...]

The 2010 Workshop on Algorithms for Modern Massive Data Sets (MMDS 2010) finished up this past Friday (June 18th) at Stanford. This was an exceptionally well organized conference: four days of mind-stretching talks on algorithm development and the challenges of working with massive data sets approached from almost every conceivable angle. The ... [Read more...]