Statistics at UTSA
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Is it just me? Or…
…are you, too, getting tired of being jerked around by folks from a really bad neighborhood? Read more
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R Tutorial: A Bayesian Estimate of Proportion
This is an old chestnut in Bayesian statistics, using the conjugate beta prior to find a beta posterior distribution for a proportion. If you’re unfamiliar with the calculation of the posterior distribution, there’s a link in the tutorial. Read more
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R Tutorial: Teasing Out a Markov Chain
Azzalini and Bowman’s Old Faithful geyser data provides fodder for a lot of data exploration in R (scatterplots, ggplot2, simple regression, kmeans clustering, and Markov chain estimation). All the really interesting stuff in the tutorial happens if you click through to Analysis > Models > Standardized Cluster Model. (The standardized clustering approach is not given Read more
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Beginning: R Tutorials
After a long, slow start, R is catching on with statisticians and (some) scientists at UTSA. The Biology Department has asked that I use R in teaching biostatistics, and many of the courses for statistics majors are using R rather than SAS (a UTSA tradition). Students have not been idle; the statistics club has asked Read more
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New Tricks for this Old Dog
Udacity is offering an introductory statistics course this summer, beginning June 25th. I’ve enrolled, to see how the Big Boys do it. This is going to put a lot of pressure on traditional universities–especially here in Texas, where we’re busily hammering out the $10,000 Bachelor’s degree. I figure if I don’t get up with the Read more
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A fair 3-way choice using coin tosses
I’d like to make a fair and random choice among 3 alternatives, but the only randomizing device I have available is a coin to toss. Worse yet, I suspect the coin may be biased. What to do? Read more
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Heretics! Burn them!
Just as UTSA begins to ramp up its Quantitative Scholarship program to inject mathematical reasoning into every crevice of our curriculum, heretics are beginning to doubt the whole enterprise. Part of the problem is that most remedial and math literacy programs (and textbooks) are filled with bullshit applications and examples (“the rate at which the Read more
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A short tale about the long tail
Lingustics Log has a nice post about early papers on long tail distributions. Good dissertation material, thanks guys! Read more
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Brace yourself for (re)apportionment!
Here’s a concise history of congressional apportionment, with a good stab at explaining the mathematical rules involved. Tannenbaum’s Excursions in Modern Mathematics devotes a chapter to the topic; I used to teach this in our statistical literacy course. Tip from The Geek Press Update (22 July). A new book on voting systems is reviewed in Read more
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Hey, I’m not (too) crazy!
Looks like I’m not the only one who’s thinking about having students read some of the classics in statistics, see here and here! Even more classical goodies in the tip from Andrew Gelman. Read more
The Random Texan 