There is a lot of talk about the skills needed for working in Statistics/Data Science, with the discussion often focusing on theoretical understanding, programming languages, exploratory data analysis, and visualization. There are many good blog posts dealing with how you get data, process it with your favorite language and then creating some good-looking plots. However,… Continue reading Being data curious: the strange case of lamb consumption in NZ
Category: tutorials
Less wordy R
The Swarm Lab presents a nice comparison of R and Python code for a simple (read 'one could do it in Excel') problem. The example works, but I was surprised by how wordy the R code was and decided to check if one could easily produce a shorter version. The beginning is pretty much the… Continue reading Less wordy R
Split-plot 2: let’s throw in some spatial effects
Disappeared for a while collecting frequent flyer points. In the process I 'discovered' that I live in the middle of nowhere, as it took me 36 hours to reach my conference destination (Estoril, Portugal) through Christchurch, Sydney, Bangkok, Dubai, Madrid and Lisbon. Where was I? Showing how split-plots look like under the bonnet (hood for… Continue reading Split-plot 2: let’s throw in some spatial effects
R is a language
A commenter on this blog reminded me of one of the frustrating aspects faced by newbies, not only to R but to any other programming environment (I am thinking of typical students doing stats for the first time). The statement "R is a language" sounds perfectly harmless if you have previous exposure to programming. However,… Continue reading R is a language