I went to the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) conference a couple of weeks ago. One of the great benefits of this conference, more than most others, is the extent to which you see new people discussing new ideas. What WUSS is not For both statistical software and academics, I have found a diminishing…
Hello, world – It’s me, on my soapbox again. The latest straw was a discussion of articles in Science which have been the subject of retraction or “expression of concern”. According to Retraction Watch there are between 30 and 95 retractions each year. The ones you hear about are usually in medicine and the “hard”…
If you are not at WUSS you missed world-famous statistician Stanley Azen SINGING the conclusion of his keynote accompanied by an original score on the piano that he had written himself , thus setting an impossible standard for any other presenter to top. My only talent being judo (I was the world champion 26 years…
My friend demanded. “Are you crazy?” (Only your real friends feel free to begin conversations this way.) “Why in the HELL are you doing five presentations at that conference? For free! Can you even tell me how many presentations you’ve done in your life? No, you can’t, can you? It’s not like it’s going to…
I just got back from the Tedx American Riviera. The American Riviera (Riviera apparently being an ancient Indian word meaning “place with nice weather and scenery that is full of rich people”) was held in Santa Barbara. I liked the TED Talks I saw on youtube and Eric Greenspan had recommended it on Twitter, and…
Let’s assume, based on a random fact that I just made up for the moment, that 50% of all businesses that succeed are restaurants. Based on this fact, as a business consultant, you advise me that I should offer daily specials, make up flyers that I post on cars around the neighborhood, be sure I…
AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION THIS WEEK … “This paper is not going to be as much an academic treatise as most of the ones I write, but I am hoping it will be more interesting. I was wondering about the fact that some well-respected people say the secret to career success is to be the foremost…
My work day started with a call on research design and ended ten hours later after I fixed a program that wasn’t working. I just resigned from my position as senior statistical consultant at a major research university so that I could concentrate on research. I’m on the technical staff on several projects, have a…
A friend of mine mentioned that a woman had invited him to her apartment. Let me just say that my friend does not exactly rival Mother Teresa for celibacy. Astounded, I asked him why he hadn’t taken her up on the offer. He answered that his son had died recently and he didn’t want to…
Does moving from being a novice to a not-so-novice programmer mean knowing everything there is to know about PROC TABULATE? Well, yes and no. It would be hard to call someone who knew everything there was to know about SAS ODS or every possible regression procedure in Stata from regress to nlogit a newbie. However,…