I teach several courses every year and the most difficult to pull off is FORE224/STAT202: regression modeling. The academic promotion application form in my university includes a section on one's 'teaching philosophy'. I struggle with that part because I suspect I lack anything as grandiose as a philosophy when teaching: as most university lecturers I… Continue reading Teaching linear models
Category: stats
Statistics unplugged
How much does statistical software help and how much it interferes when teaching statistical concepts? Software used in the practice of statistics (say R, SAS, Stata, etc) brings to the party a mental model that it's often alien to students, while being highly optimized for practitioners. It is possible to introduce a minimum of distraction… Continue reading Statistics unplugged
Flotsam 13: early July links
Man flu kept me at home today, so I decided to do something 'useful' and go for a linkathon: Ed Yong discusses the effect of subject expectations in psychology experiments Nice Results, But What Did You Expect? At the beginning there was another article on The placebo phenomenon, and another one on The placebo defect.… Continue reading Flotsam 13: early July links
My take on the USA versus Western Europe comparison of GM corn
A few days ago I came across Jack Heinemann and collaborators' article (Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest, Open Access) comparing the agricultural sectors of USA and Western Europe‡. While the article is titled around the word sustainability, the main comparison stems from the use of Genetically Modified crops in… Continue reading My take on the USA versus Western Europe comparison of GM corn
GM-fed pigs, chance and how research works
Following my post on GM-fed pigs I received several comments, mostly through Twitter. Some people liked having access to an alternative analysis, while others replied with typical anti-GM slogans, completely ignoring that I was posting about the technical side of the paper. This post is not for the slogan crowd (who clearly are not interested… Continue reading GM-fed pigs, chance and how research works