The Lego Mindstorm kit provides software and hardware to create programmable robots. A very simple first task is figuring out how to make the robot move any given distance. You get to program the number of wheel rotations. The video … Continue reading →
Lars Peter Hansen won the Nobel Prize in economics for creating the generalized method of moments. A rather technical explanation of the idea appears on Wikipedia. These are a good set of lecture notes on gmms if you like math. I … Continue reading →
Should you ever guess on the SAT® or PSAT standardized tests? My son is getting ready to take the preliminary SAT (PSAT), which is a practice test for the SAT. A teacher gave his class this advice regarding guessing: For a multiple-choice questions, if you can eliminate one or two [...]
The International Journal of Forecasting is calling for papers on probabilistic energy forecasting. Here are the details (taken from Tao Hong’s blog). In today’s competitive and dynamic environment, more and more decision making processes in the energy industry are relying on probabilistic forecasts. The applications of probabilistic energy forecasts spread across planning and operations of the entire energy value chain. We are seeking papers from researchers working on the areas…
A really interesting comparison between educational and TV menus (via Rafa). On a related note, it will be interesting to see how/whether the traditional educational system will be disrupted. I'm as into the MOOC thing as the next guy, but I'm … Continue reading →
Arthur Benjamini says we should teach statistics before calculus. He points out that most of what we do in high school math is preparing us for calculus. He makes the point that while physicists, engineers and economists need calculus, in the … Continue reading →
In my last blog post I described how to implement a "runs test" in the SAS/IML language. The runs test determines whether a sequence of two values (for example, heads and tails) is likely to have been generated by random chance. This article describes two applications of the runs test. [...]
Editor's note: This post is contributed by Debashis Ghosh. Debashis is the chair of the Biostatistical Methods and Research Design (BMRD) study sections at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). BMRD's focus is statistical methodology. I write today to discuss effects of … Continue reading →
Editor’s Note: This post written by Roger Peng is part of a two-part series on Scientist-Statistician interactions. The first post was written by Elizabeth C. Matsui, an Associate Professor in the Division of Allergy and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins … Continue reading →
Robert Goodell Brown was the father of exponential smoothing. He died last week at the age of 90. While I never met him, I was indebted to him for exponential smoothing and his practical and insightful books. Today I received this email from King Harrison III advising of his death. Twenty years ago I attended the ISF 93 conference in Pittsburgh, which honored Bob Brown on his 70th birthday, and…
