On deck this week

Mon: What hypothesis testing is all about. (Hint: It’s not what you think.)

Rembrandt van Rijn (2) vs. Betrand Russell

Tues: One simple trick to make Stan run faster

George Carlin (2) vs. Barbara Kruger

Wed: I actually think this infographic is ok

Bernard-Henry Levy (3) vs. Jacques Derrida

Thurs: Defaults, once set, are hard to change.

Judy Garland (4) vs. Al Sharpton

Fri: “The Saturated Fat Studies: Set Up to Fail”

John Waters (1) vs. Bono

Sat: “With that assurance, a scientist can report his or her work to the public, and the public can trust the work.”

Plato (1) vs. Mark Twain (4)

Sun: Causal Impact from Google

Mary Baker Eddy vs. Mohammad (2)

No “On deck this month” this month because I don’t know what all the seminar-speaker matchups are gonna be. I’ll tell you, though, we have some excellent posts in the regular series. So stay tuned!

2 thoughts on “On deck this week

  1. Any chance you’d be interested in blogging about the latest USNews rankings of Statistics Graduate programs at http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/statistics-rankings? I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on what it means that Biostatistics Departments (based at Schools of Public Health) are outranking traditional mathematical Statistics Departments (usually based at Faculties of Arts and Sciences). For example, in the latest ranking, Harvard Biostatistics is tied with University of Washington Biostatistics for 3rd place, whereas the Harvard Statistics Department is tied with University of Washington Statistics at 7th.

    Obvious USNews’ methodology of surveying peer institutions should be considered to be useful primarily for entertainment purposes, but there may still be a story to tell here

    • Anders:

      The rankings lack face validity and I’m not impressed with their methods. I think Matt Salganik’s crowdsourced approach to rankings makes more sense. Beyond this, any of these programs could be good for the right purpose, and depending on what you work on and where you want to live. These sort of rankings are as bad in their own way as the columns of David Brooks are in theirs, but somehow it’s hard for me to really care about them. Maybe because I almost never see these rankings but I do subscribe to the newspaper. Or, to put it another way, the rankings may be for entertainment purposes but I don’t find them very entertaining!

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