Advogato blog for statbanana

7 Aug 2003

Thu, 7 Aug 2003 03:12:34 GMT

SCO is horrible show your support by picking up a SCO sucks t-shirt. All proceeds go to the Open Source Now legal fund

4 Aug 2003

Mon, 4 Aug 2003 16:57:21 GMT

Update: I moved to Raleigh North Carolina to go to grad school, and I got a job at SAS. I have a great roomate Emily and am loving life. School starts soon and then I can get back to math, this summer has been the best one I have ever had :)

17 Jan 2003

Fri, 17 Jan 2003 03:43:38 GMT

I haven't written in a while as I have been very busy. In terms of school I am taking 22 credit hours so I am really loaded down.
In terms of statistics I have been working with SAS on Linux, SAS released a Linux version starting with 8.2 and while the results and basic functionality between that and the windows version are comparable the gui really needs some work.The set up is clumsy and the graphics are archaic. Enhanced editor is non existent, I hope with the version 9 release some of this will be cleared up.

In my own little world I moved out of my house in October and am now living back on campus.

In other stat news I am also working with moment generating functions and multivariate distributions. So far I have only brushed the surface so no code yet, but soon...I wish we had 40 hour days :).

I got a laptop for Christmas which has made my quality of life improve exponetally. I also got something I have wanted for years from Mark a GPS!! I can't wait to go geocaching! So although I am really busy, I am the happiest I have ever been :)

26 Aug 2002

Mon, 26 Aug 2002 22:15:22 GMT

I think I am going to use Hart's approximation for several distributions, some of the formulas can achieve precision out to 20 decimal places, this is the best I have seen so far. I really want to try and stay away from any expansion derived approximations which associate the number of observations while still getting the precision I need.

Anna -n- Schey

19 Aug 2002

Mon, 19 Aug 2002 21:33:37 GMT

Back to distributions. I took a crack at normal today and came up with the following options, I could use an asymptotic expansion, or a power series I found an interesting approximation by C Hastings, at least it was interesting until I tried it and it produced crap results. All and all I am in love with the handbook of mathematical functions, and things are going well. If anyone has had any luck with a fast precise algorithm pls. do share :)

In personal news (in case anyone cares) my bf just got back from a trip and bought me a stuffed penguin from FAO Schwarz it's kwel.

I am also going to NC for the Tech Circus it's nothing huge and technical but should be fun. Plus I will get to see some friends, mgalgoci, mark, timball etc.

* anna naps with penguin *
:-)

12 Aug 2002

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 23:28:42 GMT

I am working on an implementation of the cell means model for single factor ANOVA. I think this will be more effective in that this model can be used again in regression and calculated much more quickly then a typical least squares computation.

Some analysis I did on test score data was presented today and for the most part it went well. The one complaint I had is that at the end of the presentation the facilitator stood up and reminded everyone that these are "just numbers" He went on to express how simple it is to pervert data into any result you desire. While the perversion aspect is certainly true, I have a hard time believing that the information will be taken seriously when presented as just numbers.

This is a commen theme, people rely heavily on the analysis I give them, with little or no thought to the theory that is behind it. I suppose some people go around ignoring multicollinearity and serial correlation but I am not one of them.

*whew*

1 Aug 2002

Thu, 1 Aug 2002 02:35:53 GMT

UGH...SAS on VMS is not pretty, sassy yes, pretty no. After playing with the settings for a while I managed to make it slightly more bearable. I sent an email about getting RIT to extend it's site license to include the UNIX version of SAS, this would make me a much happier data enthusiast :-) If they don't I will kick them in the shin until they do :-P

going on a wine tour tomorrow...yummy

30 Jul 2002

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 17:47:38 GMT

Keeping in mind the speed advantage of storing variable data in rows I can see why the library concept is so appealing for SAS. Not only can you quickly refer to the dataset internally, but you can also control the storage and order of observations in order to minimize side and processing time.

Why is it so hot im my office????

30 Jul 2002

Tue, 30 Jul 2002 01:26:31 GMT

hrm. Why does RIT consider it ok to disable analog without telling anyone ????? why why why ????

13 Jul 2002

Sat, 13 Jul 2002 22:16:57 GMT

Yeah! I got ANOVA done today, just the basics SSTR SSE SST, MSE, F ......ect. Progress is being made :-) the only issue is mimicking the results produced by SAS, since I am strictly following distribution and summation functions I'm hoping they match. Grilling tonight :-)