An interview with Susan Murphy

Here is a very interesting interview I read online. Highly recommended.

My favorite quote from this interview, among others, is

Well, I've got this viewpoint—and I don't know if this is very mature—but I think it's a big game out there, and we all have to be prepared to play it. Everyone is trying to frame things in their own way, and we all have to try and be as educated as possible so we can understand the degree to which it's a game, and know if someone's trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Even if it's someone I agree with!

I totally feel the same way. Having been a statistician for years, I have become more and more aware of the fact that I often interpret the world in a way different from my non-statistician friends.

R commander: why is clicking better than typing?

I came across a GUI for R called R commander. It resembles a typical, more user friendly, interface where users can explore the drop down menus and select (basic) things they can apply to their data. I do not find it easier than writing my own R script. But I think this can actually be a blessing to people (i.e., students) who have not written a single script in their life before coming into an Intro Stat class.

I think the main reason why this makes life easier for certain user group is that you don't have to remember much to get started. The interface has the same structure as the other interface used by a personal computer (PC or Mac)'s operating system. Therefore, you understand what you are supposed to do, more or less. Therefore, most students should have had the required essential skill set to use R commander before taking the intro stat course, even not R itself.

The regular R console is another story. You can copy-paste the examples in a teacher's lecture notes without having a clue about what you are doing. This is understandably frustrating. If a student in an intro state class decides to go deeper into statistics, s/he eventually would need to learn how to program (R, C, Perl, Python, or whatever). This will naturally become more interesting (or less frustrating) once the student is into statistics already.

BBC Horizon - Homeopathy the test

This is one of my favorite teaching examples as it explains very well the placebo effects, the importance of blinded randomized experiment and the meaning of statistical significance.

If you prefer to read, you can go to the show's page.

NRG Research Highlight: A Mendelian code for complex disease

Read more at http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v14/n11/full/nrg3599.html

Key quotes:

1. [The authors] analysed the phenotypic information present in large numbers of electronic medical records from the United States and Denmark to look for co-morbidities among Mendelian and complex diseases
2. each complex disease was found to be associated with a unique set of Mendelian conditions.
3. This finding led the authors to explore genetic models that could explain the risk of complex disease in patients with more than one Mendelian phenotype. The best explanation was provided by a model in which non-additive genetic interactions in specific 'communities' of loci have crucial roles.

What is "non-additive genetic interactions"?

The leap from an academic program to the corporate world (or any world)

At a recent meeting on educational issues, someone reported feedback from big companies on fresh graduates from academic graduate programs in general. It is widely felt that there is a gap between the training and the expectation in the corporate world. More specifically, most companies felt that fresh graduates from academic programs need to have more preparation in four areas: strategic thinking, project management, team work, presenting the big picture of a project (the elevator talk).

Hmm, these are all important for surviving in academia too! I thought. Maybe there should be more emphasis on having final projects (with final presentations) in our courses at all levels (undergraduate, MA and PhD). To make these handful of projects count, mentoring during the project and feedback after the project hold the key.

This semester, for G6101, there will be an assigned data project as part of the final exam, mimicking the format of our qualifying exam on applied statistics. G6101 doesn't have many presentation opportunities for the students (yet). For W4335 "sample surveys", I am experimenting assigning two small project ideas every week as "optional projects". Students are required to do two such projects during the semester and "present" their results in the discussion board. Hope these will bring them closer to their landing pad in the new world (whatever and wherever it may be) after they finish our program/course.