So, I am loving my new computer – 12 GB RAM, dual quad-core and a terabyte of space. Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) plus four VMs with Vista 32, Vista 64, Office 32 and Office 64, plus two enormous monitors so I can run Unix programs on our cluster and monitor that while I am…
Not being able to move much, I have spent a lot more time lately in the company of my 11-year-old daughter, and that is not a bad thing. She started Algebra this year and she commented to me, “You know, when I read this stuff, like Y = 3x +5 and what is Y if…
Whether you are a statistician, SPSS guru, SAS programmer or professor and world-renowned expert on re-incarceration, odds are great that you are susceptible to bubble-vision. You work, breathe and socialize within one or two very narrow bubbles. This is bad and unhealthy. You’ll miss much of life that is beautiful, exciting, dramatic, interesting, tragic and…
Logistic regression is based on logarithms. Ordinary Least Squares regression and analysis of variance uses the actual values as the dependent and independent variables in an equation. Logistic regression does not. What is a log, anyway? Let’s start with the very basics. First we learned to add: 5+5+5+5 = 20 After about eight years of…
I was going to write about the log of odds ratios and explain logarithms. This is the very, very odd fact I have noticed in most of social science – people in doctoral programs are often thrust into statistics course for which they really don’t have the basic mathematical foundation. This is because if they…
Yes, I am the F-word – a feminist. I was at a faculty meeting this weekend and one of the presenters began by saying, pointing to a colleague in the audience, “I am sure Dr. Y knows more about this than me.” Several times in her presentation on analysis of assessment data she would pause…
I hate SQL. This is probably completely irrational, like that guy I turned down for a date in junior high school who my mom always tells me founded a very successful company and is making piles of money. No wait, it wasn’t irrational, he always tried to copy off me in Algebra, plus he was…
When I read textbooks, whether in mathematics or other fields, these are usually as boring as watching a light bulb flicker. Searching the Internet for Algebra problems can get to be pretty depressing. (Whether someone who spends her spare time looking for Algebra problems might already have mental health issues is a separate question not…
I was reading a book this week, Mathematics for the Intelligent Non-mathematician. If it was a person, this book would be your grandmother, not terribly exciting but pleasant to spend time with and if you paid attention you were likely to learn something. Since I use mathematics for my living, you might reasonably wonder why…
Silence is one of the most under-used teaching techniques. As Julia learns mathematics, I notice major differences in the way my husband and I respond to her. After I ask her a question, I wait for an answer. The period at the end of that sentence is deliberate. I don’t do anything else. I don’t…