Strange events permit themselves the luxury of occurring —  Charlie Chan

Archive for November, 2006

Exact inference: does it matter?

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 Posted in Foundations, Research/Theory | 1 Comment »

There has been quite an explosion of interest in so-called exact inference over the past decade. Partly this has been generated by computing power making exact calculations possible. But it ... Read more..

The Price is Right

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 Posted in Fun Stuff | 4 Comments »

At the end of the pretty mindless games show "The Price is Right" the two finalist play against each other in a game that involves chance. The chance element is ... Read more..

Confidence intervals and typicality

Friday, November 17th, 2006 Posted in Cognition, Research/Theory | 8 Comments »

I’m interested in how people think about statistical ideas—that’s ‘statistical cognition’. How do ‘read’ a CI? How do you interpret it, how would you explain its message to someone? We ... Read more..

What can Argument Mapping do for Us?

Thursday, November 16th, 2006 Posted in Cognition, Teaching | 4 Comments »

As a software magpie (anything shiny attracts my attention) I often find myself trawling through obscure reaches of the web, looking for interesting things. I'm especially interested in different ... Read more..

Four Legs Good; Two Legs Bad

Saturday, November 11th, 2006 Posted in Profession, Teaching | 3 Comments »

My title refers to the mechanical decision procedure adopted by the politically-correct animals in George Orwell's "Animal Farm" for judging the merit of ideas. Similar thinking seems to be employed ... Read more..

Slow news day: Who are these famous statisticians #2?

Friday, November 10th, 2006 Posted in Fun Stuff | 5 Comments »

This is number 2 in a series of posts of famous statisticians. Mainly this is just for fun. But I am also hoping that anyone who met or knew these ... Read more..

Announcement: Short Course

Thursday, November 9th, 2006 Posted in Events, Profession | No Comments »

The Department of Statistics at Macquarie University is hosting a short course Correspondence Analysis in Practice by Prof Michael Greenacre, author of well-known texts on the subject. The course will ... Read more..

Teaching Excel-ence Pt 2

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 Posted in Teaching | 3 Comments »

As several commenters to Pt 1 pointed out, there are other spreadsheets besides Excel and I do not endorse Excel or discount the numerical problems with some of the built ... Read more..

Behrend Memorial Lecture at University of Melbourne

Monday, November 6th, 2006 Posted in Events, Profession | 1 Comment »

Following neatly and accidentally on the theme of uncertainty in decision-making, on Tuesday October 31, Professor Mark Burgman gave a wonderful presentation on Making use of uncertainty in environmental decision-making ... Read more..

Teaching Excel-lence Pt 1

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 Posted in Teaching | 12 Comments »

For about 5 years now I have been teaching basic business statistics using Excel as the only computational platform. So I thought I would share with you the main reasons ... Read more..