Publications by civilstat
Spinner Doctor
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, and ask every student to fix a bet on one region for the entire month. I’d seal my own bet in an envelope...
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Separation of degrees
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 see data on changing patterns among STEM degree earners. However, there seemed to be a missed opportunity. The...
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R101
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 of nifty graphics that R can produce? Yes, we do. Nice. So what e...
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Stats 101 resources
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 in a nice classroom environment: The best classroom setting For self-study, however, you might try an open course online. MIT has ...
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Matrix vs Data Frame in R
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 single row of a dataframe is a one-row dataframe, i.e. a list, not a vector. R won’t automatically treat dataframe rows as vectors, beca...
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Getting SASsy
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 is that it was designed around those (now-ancient) computers that used punch cards. So the DATA step processes one observation at a time,...
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useR 2012: my materials
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 and resources I’ve been discovering. Related To leave a comment for the author, please follow the link and comment on their...
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useR 2012: impressions, tutorials
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; and Vanderbilt University’s leafy green campus and comfortable facilities were an excelle...
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Maps of changes in area boundaries, with R
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 my R code in case others find them useful. A change in Census block-groups from 2000 to 2010, in Mobile, AL U.S. Census Burea...
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useR 2012: main conference braindump
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 need to do, but sadly, when I need to order a pizza, I still have to pick up the telephone. —Roger Peng > There are several chains of pizzerias in the ...
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