Computer Wonkistry « Nor Talk Too Wise

The Best Statistical Programming Language is ...Javascript?

R-Bloggers has recently been buzzing about Julia, the new kid on the statistical programming block. Julia, however, is hardly the sole contender for the market of R defectors, with Clojure-fork library Incanter generating buzz as well. Even with these two making noise, I think there’s a huge point that everyone is missing, and it’s front-and-center [...]

Cybercrime – Can you afford not to ignore it?

Kate Lister posted a piece about the dangers of cyber crime, especially emanating from Russia and former Soviet States, and East Asia. Oh, and West Africa, too.

Yawn.

I’m really sick of these sensational studies claiming that there are zillions of cyber bad guys out there stealing your money one penny at a time. There’s [...]

Presenting the World Development Indicators

I oftentimes find myself wanting to merge economic data with my datasets to control for things or look for relationships. One of the best sources of such data is the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. Unfortunately, almost all of the data I work with on a regular basis is presented in a country-year format, while [...]

Musings on Correlation (or yet another reason I fear for those non-methodologically inclined students in my cohort)

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means for two variables to be correlated. Scientists throw around the term like it’s uniformly understood, but I fear that an understanding of the concept is elusive to substantive researchers who aren’t interested in empirical methods, except as a means by which we can demonstrate that our [...]

Measuring the EIU Democracy Index (with Polity IV)

Yet again, I have conjured up an (academically) unusual dataset on democracy! This time it’s the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, a weird little gem. The dataset is the basis for a paper the Economist publishes every two years. Because of this biannuality, there is data estimating the “Democratic-ness” of the world’s countries for 2006, [...]

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The Best Statistical Programming Language is ...Javascript?

Cybercrime – Can you afford not to ignore it?

Presenting the World Development Indicators

Musings on Correlation (or yet another reason I fear for those non-methodologically inclined students in my cohort)

Measuring the EIU Democracy Index (with Polity IV)

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