Difficulty in obtaining data for secondary analyses

A whopping 73% of people won't/cant' share their data.

The poor availability of research data for reanalysis has just become much poorer

This about sums it up

“I'll swallow a lie when I have to; I've swallowed a few big ones lately. But the stat games? That lie? It's what ruined this department. Shining up shit and calling it gold so majors become colonels and mayors become governors. Pretending to do policework while one generation fucking trains the next how not to do the job.”

Green Ray T-Shirts

GreenRay T-Shirts

Very cool designs, some of which were done by one of my friends (seen modeling the "Matrix Ray").

Genie and Smile

Thank you UPitt for free decision analysis sofware:
Genie and Smile

Zombie Students

If I teach, I'm gonna open up the course with a comment on this.

Kaggle - a platform for forecasting and data mining competitions

Kaggle - a platform for forecasting and data mining competitions
This is where we need to go.

Beyond Awesome

Machine learning at its finest:

MLComp.org

Inkjet Skin Printer

Skin Printer

Video game developers are plotting against us

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted_p1.html

Hat Tip: Cosma Shalizi

Wikileaks of Reuters reporters murder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaqY12VHFv4&feature=player_embedded

Seeing meaning in random market fluctuations

I don't know the exact details, but almost every day on the business headlines I read either that the economy is headed toward disaster because some large corporation fell below its quarterly profit expectation, or that we are headed toward prosperity because a company exceeded it.

For example, from Bloomberg, "Best Buy, the largest U.S. electronics retailer, is among companies seeing demand pick up. The Richfield, Minnesota-based merchant last month reported fourth-quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ estimates as discounts helped boost sales.

Carnival, the biggest cruise-line operator, last month raised its full-year profit forecast as ticket prices rebounded from 2009’s lows amid more bookings."

Are there confidence intervals around these forecasts? Merely exceeding analysts' estimates doesn't seem like news. Furthermore, they provide an explanation--the treatment effect of discounts--that can explain this effect independently of economic recovery.

I guess I don't see how this is news. Does anyone know more about profit forecasting? Are they point estimates or confidence intervals? The same thing with the Dow Jones Index: people seem to interpret random fluctuations as meaningful with absolutely no accounting for margin of error in estimates.

Spindle Cell wonder

http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2006/07/spindle-neurons-next-new-thing.html

Laundry folding robot

http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pabbeel/personal_robotics.html