Some people like coding and they like drawing too. What do they have in common? I like to code—I don’t looove it, but I like it ok and I do it a lot—but I find drawing to be very difficult. I can keep tinkering with my code to get it to look like whatever I […]
Archive of posts filed under the Teaching category.
StanCon 2020 is on Thursday!
For all that registered for the conference, THANK YOU! We, the organizers, are truly moved by how global and inclusive the community has become. We are currently at 230 registrants from 33 countries. And 25 scholarships were provided to people in 12 countries. Please join us. Registration is $50. We have scholarships still available (more […]
Some questions from high school students about college and future careers
For a high school summer program I’m connected to, students have questions about careers. They’re mostly interested in technical careers (engineering, science, public health) and also some careers relating to arts, communication, and government service. Here are some of the questions the students are asking: What advice would you now give your younger self? What […]
“No one is going to force you to write badly. In the long run, you won’t even be rewarded for it. But, unfortunately, it is true that they’ll often let you get away with it.”
Basbøll says it well. Relatedly, see here. Writing is hard.
Further debate over mindset interventions
Warne Following up on this post, “Study finds ‘Growth Mindset’ intervention taking less than an hour raises grades for ninth graders,” commenter D points us to this post by Russell Warne that’s critical of research on growth mindset. Here’s Warne: Do you believe that how hard you work to learn something is more important than […]
Regression and Other Stories is available!
This will be, without a doubt, the most fun you’ll have ever had reading a statistics book. Also I think you’ll learn a few things reading it. I know that we learned a lot writing it. Regression and Other Stories started out as the first half of Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models, but […]
“Time Travel in the Brain”
Natalie Biderman and Daphna Shohamy wrote this science article for kids. Here’s the abstract: Do you believe in time travel? Every time we remember something from the past or imagine something that will happen in the future, we engage in mental time travel. Scientists discovered that, whether we mentally travel back into the past or […]
Embracing Variation and Accepting Uncertainty (my talk this Wed/Tues at a symposium on communicating uncertainty)
I’ll be speaking (virtually) at this conference in Australia on Wed 1 July (actually Tues 30 June in our time zone here): Embracing Variation and Accepting Uncertainty It is said that your most important collaborator is yourself in 6 months. Perhaps the best way to improve our communication of data uncertainty to others is to […]
Am I missing something here? This estimate seems off by several orders of magnitude!
A reporter writes: I’m writing about a new preprint by doctors at Stanford University and UCLA on relative COVID-19 risk, in which they assert the risk is much less than most people might think. One author in an interview compared it to the risk of food poisoning. It’s a preprint so it’s obviously not fully […]
“Banishing ‘Black/White Thinking’: A Trio of Teaching Tricks”
Richard Born writes: The practice of arbitrarily thresholding p values is not only deeply embedded in statistical practice, it is also congenial to the human mind. It is thus not sufficient to tell our students, “Don’t do this.” We must vividly show them why the practice is wrong and its effects detrimental to scientific progress. […]
BDA FREE (Bayesian Data Analysis now available online as pdf)
Our book, Bayesian Data Analysis, is now available for download for non-commercial purposes! You can find the link here, along with lots more stuff, including: • Aki Vehtari’s course material, including video lectures, slides, and his notes for most of the chapters • 77 best lines from my course • Data and code • Solutions […]
Career advice for a future statistician
Gary Ruiz writes: I am a first-year math major at the Los Angeles City College in California, and my long-term educational plans involve acquiring at least one graduate degree in applied math or statistics. I’m writing to ask whether you would offer any career advice to someone interested in future professional work in statistics. I […]
Online Causal Inference Seminar starts next Tues!
Dominik Rothenhäusler writes: We are delighted to announce the creation of the Online Causal Inference Seminar (OCIS)! Our goal in creating this seminar series is to provide a platform for our community to continue interacting and growing in spite of the current health crisis. The causal tent is a big one, and we hope to […]
Corona virus presentation by the Dutch CDC, also some thoughts on the audience for these sorts of presentations
Anne Pier Salverda writes: I’ve attached a corona virus presentation by the RIVM, the Dutch equivalent of the CDC. This briefing is happening as I send this email. The presentation is comprehensive and comprehensible, and it hits all the marks in the data visualization and communication department. Are you aware of any comparable presentations by […]
“Lessons from First Online Teaching Experience after COVID-19 Regulations”
Abdullah Aydogan, who teaches in the political science department here, wrote a short report of his recent online teaching experience: Here are four lessons I [Aydogan] derived from my first online education experience for my “Research Design: Data Analysis” course at Columbia University. To begin with, contrary to in-class education, it is extremely hard to […]
What is the probability that someone you know will die from COVID-19 this year?
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know You realize that life goes fast It’s hard to make the good things last You realize the sun doesn’t go down It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round Chris Sims writes: […]
We taught a class using Zoom yesterday. Here’s what we learned.
Like many schools, Columbia is moving to online teaching for awhile to minimize the potential for virus transmission, so Merlin, Pablo, and I used Zoom for our class on applied regression and causal inference. Yesterday’s topic was chapter 11, Assumptions, diagnostics, and model evaluation. Some things about the class went well, some things could be […]
An article in a statistics or medical journal, “Using Simulations to Convince People of the Importance of Random Variation When Interpreting Statistics.”
Andy Stein writes: On one of my projects, I had a plot like the one above of drug concentration vs response, where we divided the patients into 4 groups. I look at the data below and think “wow, these are some wide confidence intervals and random looking data, let’s not spend too much time more […]
“Repeating the experiment” as general advice on data collection
Izzy Kates points to the above excerpt from Introductory Statistics, by Neil Weiss, 9th edition, and points out: Nowhere is repeating the experiment mentioned. This isn’t the only time this mistake is made. Good point! We don’t mention replication as a statistical method in our books either! Even when we talk about the replication crisis, […]
Summer training in statistical sampling at University of Michigan
Yajuan points us to this summer program: The 53rd Sampling Program for Survey Statisticians will be offered by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research from June 3 to July 31, 2020. Founded by Professor Leslie Kish in 1961, the Sampling Program is devoted to training statisticians in sound […]