Statistics, R, Graphics and Fun

Here is my personal list of rules of thumb for people who want to meet some R gurus (quickly) in the R help mailing list (R-help@R-project.org):

• If you want to meet Dr Bill Venables, just say something about Type III Sum of Squares (better if you also mention the “unbeatable” SAS);
• If you want to meet Prof Douglas Bates, say something about LSMEANS (of course, with SAS) and P-values for the fixed effects in lmer() (or wait in the mixed-models group r-sig-mixed-models@r-project.org — he often shows up there);
• If you want to meet Prof Frank Harrell Jr, say SAS is unbeatable (or efficient, golden-standard, high-quality graphics, whatever);
• If you want to meet Dr Martin Mächler, say something like “I need help on a library called ***” (it is said that he would show up in 5 mins upon such mistakes, but I feel he is tired of correcting people who don’t know the difference between a “package” and a “library” now);
• If you want to meet Prof Brian Ripley (the-professor-on-whom-the-sun-never-sets), well, I guess you can say anything, because he is so devoted to the mailing list that you can see him a.e., but you have to be careful enough not to be “Ripleyed”;

I’ve been reading the mailing list for about 2 years, so I may not know enough about all the gurus. Let me know if I missed anyone. The above list is not given for serious purpose, and my real point is I learned a lot from their advice and arguments.

A beautiful video:

I’m sorry but these words are not from my mouth:

“I haven’t spoken to my wife in years. I didn’t want to interrupt her.”

Rodney Dangerfield

And I happened to find a funny illustration for this quotation:

I have forgotten where I found the article “The Science of Scientific Writing“, but I do believe there are some useful guidelines in it:

If the reader is to grasp what the writer means, the writer must understand what the reader needs.

Information is interpreted more easily and more uniformly if it is placed where most readers expect to find it.

Beginning with the exciting material and ending with a lack of luster often leaves us disappointed and destroys our sense of momentum.

We cannot succeed in making even a single sentence mean one and only one thing; we can only increase the odds that a large majority of readers will tend to interpret our discourse according to our intentions.

The information that begins a sentence establishes for the reader a perspective for viewing the sentence as a unit.

In our experience, the misplacement of old and new information turns out to be he No. 1 problem in American professional writing today.

Put in the topic position the old information that links backward; put in the stress position the new information you want the reader to emphasize.

As critical scientific readers, we would like to concentrate our energy on whether the experiments prove the hypotheses.

It may seem obvious that a scientific document is incomplete without the interpretation of the writer; it may not be so obvious that the document cannot “exist” without the interpretation of each reader.

And here is another paper “How to write consistently boring scientific literature” which is much more interesting (actually ironic!) and worth reading.

I'll take the train and go home tomorrow, which indicates my absence from the internet for about one month. During this month, I'll try to finish writing my book on statistical graphics with R as well as some other papers at home.

Adieu… 

This is a special moment.

Time flies like a rocket… I must make full preparations for the new year because there might be great changes to my life one year later. Now my aim is to find an appropriate direction for me to study abroad. Recently I felt the directions for the applications of statistics are much easier than theories — I really dislike those pure mathematical theories (although I know the importance)…

On the Christmas Eve, there was a man dressed as “Santa Claus” in the street, with a bag in his hands as usual… So everybody just gazed at that big bag, thinking about how many presents were there…

Guess what?

This “Santa” opened his bag and asked the passers-by, “Ladies and gentlemen, would you please give me some money?”

Money is always important

"The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money."

– Mark Twain

Yesterday when I was wandering about in the campus, I found a somewhat amazing scene: there were many flowers blossoming alongside the alleys, which just reminded me of a feeling of the spring in this fall. Thus I took some photos for these beauties using my mobile phone:

Hmmm… Interesting season

I see this donkey from IconArchive when I was searching for an icon for my web pages:

It's lovely, isn't it?