I just read a wonderful piece written about how the Harvey Mudd increased the ratio of females declaring a major in Computer Science from 10% to 40% since 2006. That is awesome!
One of the things that they attribute this success to is changing the name of their introductory course. They renamed the course from Introduction to programming in Java to Creative Approaches to Problem Solving in Science and Engineering using Python.
I was at the vet yesterday, and just like with any doctor’s visit experience, there was a bit of waiting around – time for re-reading all the posters in the room.
And this is what caught my eye on the information sheet about feline heartworm (I’ll spare you the images):
The question asks: _“My cat is indoor only. Is it still at risk?” _
The way I read it, this question is asking about the risk of an indoor only cat being heartworm positive.
We had an interesting departmental seminar last week, thanks to our post-doc Joakim Ekstrom, that I thought would be fun to share. The topic was The Future of Statistics discussed by a panel of three statisticians. From left to right in the room: Songchun Zhu (UCLA Statistics), Susan Paddock (RAND), and Jan DeLeeuw (UCLA Statistics). The panel was asked about the future of inference: waxing or waning.
The answers spanned the spectrum from “More” to “Less” and did so, interestingly enough, as one moved left to right in order of seating.
The L.A. Times had a nice editorial on Thursday (Oct 30) encouraging City Hall to make its data available to the public. As you know, fellow Citizens, we’re all in favor of making data public, particularly if the public has already picked up the bill and if no individual’s dignity will be compromised. For me this editorial comes at a time when I’ve been feeling particularly down about the quality of public data.
I’m working on the 2nd edition of our textbook, Gould & Ryan, and was looking for some examples of bad statistical graphics. Last time, I used FBI data and created a good and bad graphic from the data. This time, I was pleased to see that the FBI provided its own bad graphic.
This shows a dramatic decrease in crime over the last 5 years. (Not sure why 2012 data aren’t yet available.
There’s a statistical meme that is making its way into pundits' discussions (as we might politely call them) that is of interest to statistics educators. There are several variations, but the basic theme is this: because of the government shutdown, people are unable to benefit from the new drugs they receive by participating in clinical trials. The L.A Times went so far as to publish an editorial from a gentleman who claimed that he was cured by his participation in a clinical trial.
How do you organize the books in your office?
