quantitative scholarship
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A Primer on Clinical Trials
Over on the Scientific American blogs, Dr Judy Stone begins a series of online articles describing the ins and outs of clinical trials. Most folks have no idea how complicated or time-consuming the process is. Molecules to Medicine Stay tuned, I’ll keep these updated. Tip from Boing, Boing. Read more
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Weekly geekery
My buddy Jaime is always reminding me of cool stuff I see on the web, but forget to pass on. I’m trying to improve. Everyday math Fibonacci sequences — you do the math. (Tip from CBS News). How algorithms shape our world (Tip from The Endeavour). The powers of ten, as applied to the national Read more
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Optimal Grilling
The Rapid Steak Algorithm. OK, so it’s really an introductory article about operations research, which we at UTSA, in our infinite wisdom, call management science, to keep the engineers from getting their grubby paws on it. Writer Sanjay Saigal (is that some kind of Houston name?) promises more of this good stuff. Tip from the Read more
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Regression revelation
Here’s a clever reformulation of simple least-squares regression that estimates slope as a weighted average of pairwise slopes. Too cool! Read more
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Heresy in math education
Jan Nordgren pointed me to this dissenting essay. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the Read more
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Anybody got a sense of scale here?
30,000 pigs floating down the river in the recent Aussie floods? Didn’t that seem like…well…like a LOT of pigs? Sometimes quantitative literacy is really, really simple, if you just pay attention. Update (8 February). Maybe 30,000 isn’t too unreasonable a number! Read more
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Not quite ready for prime time
This sounds like a great innovation, using Raman spectroscopy to detect melanoma. But let’s look a little deeper at the preliminary results. First, the developers claim that in 274 known cases of melanoma, the device detected all 274 of them, which gives and estimated test sensitivity of 100%, which is patent bullshit; nothing in this Read more
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Thnik again! again
Jan Nordgreen’s Thnik Again! blog is back on the air. Get your Thinking Caps ready. Read more
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Friedman’s “Law of Statistics”
Kaiser Fung craps all over the latest Tom Friedman column, deservedly. Apparently Friedman never learned any quantitative critical thinking. Read more
The Random Texan 