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”…
Unstructured data is to the usual database as Toontown is to Irvine Ranch (or Diamond Bar or Porter Ranch or any other white bread community that has two names, six types of floor plans and where half the children are named Buffy, Jessica, Jason or Justin – you know who you are). If one were…
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…
I received two doctoral fellowships, and, years later, a post-doctoral fellowship. My grandmother, who was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and had never been to college, was quite worried. On more than one occasion, she grilled me about what I actually did, and when I told her that I went to the library, read, and then…
My paper on data visualization next week may be the most useful thing I do this year, if I succeed in convincing my audience, that is. Fact: Statisticians have failed in a very important respect. This fact became apparent to me on a beautiful day lying on the beach in Santa Monica when it was…
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…
Statistics is definitely in. In the last month I’ve gotten three invitations to “tech events” from organizations which will remain nameless on the grounds that I may want to do business with them some time in the current century. All of them wanted to do something with statistics. And apps. And social media. And whatever…
I am a huge fan of the OpenGov initiative. In brief, this is an effort mandated by executive order to increase transparency in government. One of the major benefits to people like me with equal parts curiosity, cynicism and gigabytes of RAM is that anyone can access just mountains of government data by 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…
We interrupt the prior rambling discussion of high performance computing for a new rambling discussion. A lot of things bother me – hate crimes, domestic violence, terrorism, drug-related crimes in Mexico, low college graduation rates of minority youth – well, it’s a very long list. When I was younger, so much younger than today ……..