The new common core standards have statistics first taught in the sixth grade, or so they say. I disagree with this statement because as I see it, much of the basis of statistics is taught in the earlier grades, although not called by that name. Here are just a few examples: Bar graphs Line plots…
I’m working on a section of a game that teaches fractions. If a player misses the question about where to meet up with the returning hunter, he or she gets sent to study. There is a movie that plays before this about needing to get back to the camp before dark. Here is the question,…
Sometimes the benefits of attending a conference aren’t so much the specific sessions you attend as the ideas they spark. One example was at the Western Users of SAS Software conference last week. I was sitting in a session on PROC PHREG and the presenter was talking about analyzing the covariance matrix when it hit…
On my way home from the 2014 Western Users of SAS Software conference. When I was younger, I would go to every basic session trying to find something I could use that wasn’t over my head. As I got older, I went to the statistics sessions to see if there was anything new or more…
I’m just heading off to the Western Users of SAS Software meeting that starts tomorrow. After the keynote, during which I have promised not to swear even once, I’m doing a SAS Essentials talk on Thursday, where I teach students 10 basic steps that allow them to complete an entire annual report project. One of…
I’m upset that I’m not perfect and I’m also very tired. The Invisible Developer asked me tonight if I had a list of all of the grants that I’d had funded in my career. For some reason, he thought I should have kept track of that. I told him that no one cared, not even…
Last week was very productively spent at Unite 2014 learning about all things Unity. In case you are not into game development, Unity claims to be used by over a million game developers around the world. While I rather suspect those statistics are up their with Second Life and Twitter counting everyone who ever signed up…
Lately, I’ve been working on a report that uses eight datasets that all have the same problems with the usernames. In addition to needing to remove every username that contained the word “test” or “intern” we also needed to delete specific names of the classroom teachers who had played the game. We needed to correct…
A few years ago, I was at the Western Uses of SAS Software conference and renowned statistician Stanley Azen played the piano and sang at the closing ceremony. Briefly, very briefly, I considered beginning my presentation on 10 SAS steps to an annual report, by writing a song, These are a few of my favorite PROCs,…
Finishing up my second paper for WUSS next month and I have been thinking about the usefulness of character functions in a world where it sometimes seems like everyone is just put on this earth to irritate the hell out of me. Take this problem, for example, In analyzing the data for our games, we…