good stuff
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Time for some Doubleplus Ungood Badthink
The Brat Pack of science fiction has concocted a cynical ploy to disturb the genre’s Purity of Essence; they’re giving away e-books. I wasn’t too sure about this until I read John Scalzi’s pithy recommendation. “This is bullshit” exactly sums up my opinion of his latest strawman social-justice snoozer Locked In. So he’s become my… Read more
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R Tutorial: the non-linear equation solver
Need a numerical solution to simultaneous non-linear equations? The nleqslv package is just what you’re looking for! The coding required is minimal; just define the equations you want solved in a function, set some initial values, and let ‘er rip. Here’s an example that uses the method of moments to estimate the parameters of a… Read more
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The Cool Just Keeps on Comin’
Remember this guy? Turns out he’s got competition from this guy. Tip from American Digest. Update: And here’s a Texan who spent 10 years getting the US Constitution amended; that’s cool the hard way. Update: Let’s not forget this old fart who broke the sound barrier gimmicking the controls of his Bell X-1 with a… Read more
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Multiple Comparisons, Made Easy
Adrian Colyer at the morning paper, takes a stab at explaining the problem with p-values and multiple comparisons. He shoots! He scores! The crowd* goes wild! Tip from an O’Reilly Daily Newsletter, which I found languishing in Clutter purgatory. *OK, the crowd of two or three statistics lecturers who struggle to explain the multiple comparison… Read more
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Everybody can do something better than you can
Rachel DiCarlo Currie explains Why We Need a Revival of Humility. Here’s the money quote Shortly before leaving the Senate, Kyl spoke to Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard and described a childhood trip to his local county fair in Iowa. Upon arriving at the fair, Kyl said, his father made sure that he saw… Read more
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I Call Bullshit!
I want this course in the catalog at my university. Way better than “critical thinking” or “research methods.” Tip from Open Culture. Read more
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Revealed, a True Romantic for the New Century
This man said this: “I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.” If that’s not romantic, I don’t know what is. Update: Shane Bouvet is an under-employed FedEx courier and Trump campaigner who scored a ticket to the inauguration, but had to scrounge… Read more
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Got Cognitive Bias?
Buster Benson realized he had information overload trying to remember 175 variations of cognitive bias, so he got organized. John Manoogian III would rather look at a graphic than a list, so he drew one. Check it out. Tip from Gary Jones, whose oddball collection of posts often bears re-reading. Read more
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When Bayesian Statistics Broke into History
Wonderful article here about the Mosteller and Wallace analysis of the twelve Federalist Papers, the ones of disputed authorship–was it Madison or Hamilton who wrote them? With a nice, easy-to-understand explanation of the Bayesian methodology they used. Tip from Real Clear Life. Read more
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Nacho Cheese Soup
So the Mrs and I were sitting in a cafe at the Denver Airport a couple of weeks ago, snacking on a big plate of nachos, and I got this goofy idea. The nachos are tastiest down at the bottom, when the chips start getting soggy, and there’s a lot of melted cheese left on… Read more
The Random Texan 