A common lament of the naughties is that we are drowning in data. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could swim instead of drown? I have recently become aware of a new data visualization tool called Pivot, developed by Microsoft Live Labs.
Swimming in Data
May 19th, 2010 Chris Lloyd Posted in Cognition, Graphics, Profession, Public Interest No Comments »
Ranking Schools
February 1st, 2010 Chris Lloyd Posted in Politics, Profession, Public Interest 10 Comments »
On January 26, 2010 the Grattan Institute released a report (HERE) on measuring school performance. The main recommendation of the report is to replace measurement of average school performance with so-called value-added indices. The idea is very simple – to measure student progress as the primary outcome – and by employing an appropriate statistical model to extract that component of the improvement which can be attributed to the school.
Vale Evan Williams
January 28th, 2010 Chris Lloyd Posted in Events, Profession, Public Interest No Comments »
The article
G.M.Laslett, C.J.Lloyd and G.K.Robinson (1994)Encounters with statistical inference - an interview with Evan Williams. Australian Journal of Statistics, 36, 133-152.
is HERE (about 2MB). Evan’s funeral will be held at St Luke’s Uniting Church, Barrabool Road, Highton on Wednesday (February 3) at 2.00 pm, prior to a private cremation.
The BPS Top 10
December 4th, 2009 Chris Lloyd Posted in Profession, Public Interest, Science 7 Comments »
Statistics features heavily in every psychology course. My son has just completed the rats and stats section of the course – and he vastly preferred the rats. Some psychology researchers, like Spearman, developed their own methods and have become household names in our field. But have statisticians influenced the field of psychology? We would certinaly hope so. The British Psychological Society agrees and have recently compiled an annotated list of the 10 statisticians (who were not psychologists) who have most influenced the field of psychology.** Read the rest of this entry »
ARC 2010: How did we do?
October 30th, 2009 Chris Lloyd Posted in Profession 3 Comments »
Melbourne Business School did extremely well this year - four successful grants from 5 submitted. I did not apply - so no sour grapes around here! How did statistics do? I went to the ARC outcomes page and searched each file for RFCD code 2302. Here is what I got:
ISI Durban
August 27th, 2009 Chris Lloyd Posted in Events, Profession 5 Comments »
The ISI 2009 conference was held lst week in Durban, South Africa. I quite enjoyed the previous one in Lisbon and was invited to this one so I thought I would go back for seconds. Below the fold are some impressions (considered an uncontroversial as ever) on the academic and non-academic aspects of the meeting.
Elsevier’s bogus journal
May 22nd, 2009 Chris Lloyd Posted in Profession, Public Interest 3 Comments »
Merck are currently defending a civil suit filed by an Australian who suffered a heart attack in 2003 while on Vioxx, an anti-inflammatory. Merck has been strongly criticized for distorting early scientific findings which showed cardio-vascular risk was higher for Vioxx patients than for those using a competiting drug Naproxen. They claimed that this was explained by Naproxen actually being protective against heart attack. This post is not about Vioxx however. It is about what arose in testimony concerning the relationship between the esteemed publisher Elsevier and Merck.
Expert witness
May 11th, 2009 Chris Lloyd Posted in Profession, Public Interest 1 Comment »
A few months ago I posted a query to anzstat about difficulties that I have found in providing expert witness advice to legal teams. Accoding to this Code of Conduct, the primary duty of an expert witness it to the court not to the legal team who are paying you. You are a witness - but you are paid. This inevitably sets up some tension.
The Expert Witnesses Institute of Australia has plenty of general information including their own Code of Practice. I think it is helpful to cite this code, with a link, whenever taking on a consulting job of this nature. It lets the lawyers know, right from the start, that you are not a soft touch.
I received replies from several respondents and have condensed their replies below, without specific attribution.
It’s a hard Slog finding Statistics Blogs
November 24th, 2008 Murray Jorgensen Posted in Profession, Public Interest 2 Comments »
It seems that blogs are replacing email lists as places to hold opinionated discussions about Statistics and many other fields. (Earlier email lists themselves were in a tussle with Usenet groups until the latter mode of discussion disappeared under the radar.) Read the rest of this entry »
Bragging rights for us Quants
November 14th, 2008 Chris Lloyd Posted in Profession, Public Interest 8 Comments »
The GRE is a fairly well accepted (or at least widely used) test of verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing skills. Which type of doctoral students do you think would be smartest according to this measure - philosophers or physicists?
