Good Things Friday (290) and Link Love
September 13, 2024
1. Diane Duane, author of the Young Wizards series that I started to read to JB briefly (and they are great, I’ve just been too tired to keep reading aloud), is in an unfortunate rent situation so they’re selling bundles of her ebooks at a discount.
I’m buying an extra set for any reader who’s interested, leave me a comment (with an email address!) if that’s you! (bethh?)
2. I had a doggy playdate! Throwing a ball for her for almost 80 minutes was too much, though. It needs to be less than an hour.
Homeless vets sued the VA and won. Now the government has to build thousands of homes
Voluntarily correcting the record is good: University of Alberta researchers retract COVID study, citing multiple errors
How often do we see Black people murdered on video and then the ME comes out with a different ruling on the cause of death (if it weren’t so horrible it would be laughable at the transparent lies but it IS horrible): How Deep is the Scandal at Maryland’s Medical Examiner Office? “The Appeal’s analysis found that medical examiners routinely employed biased methods, returned scientifically unfounded findings, and relied on unorthodox reporting processes, among other issues. These findings point to systemic issues of pro-law enforcement bias that extend far beyond the seemingly arbitrary selection of exactly 100 cases.”
UD researchers examine unusual condition of mirror-touch synesthesia
New nightmare fuel for me: 650-Foot High Megatsunami in Greenland Sends Seismic Waves Worldwide
You’d think this would be obvious but no: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
I lied, I do dream of labor. This or any other animal care job would be so satisfying as long as I didn’t need to depend on the wages from those jobs. Independent wealth, to me!
Haha and oh no, a Great Tadpole Wrangle sans greatness: A For Effort, But No Prize
I just found a bunch of that same initial coding error in some of a coauthor’s work (unexpected because it’s something I expect from grad students and undergrads, but not tenured professors…) Basically, unless you are really careful, missing observations will often get coded as 0.
DH and I have been discussing it recently because the other team at his company also didn’t double check their basic coding, which lead to (literally) months of wasted work because of a simple mistake that should have been caught initially.
In programming it is called “unit testing.” You do something and then in the code itself, you include a test to see if it did what you thought it did. Which in my world generally means cross-tabbing old variable with the new variable, missing in order to see if the missings are actually coded as missing.
I was even planning to write a blogpost on the topic! It is crazy how easy these mistakes are and how often they are never caught unless someone tries to replicate your work from the raw data.
I have relevant stories that I’ll have to share with you sometime re tenured professors, privately.
What should missing observations be coded as?
I would love to see that blog post!
They should be coded as missing!
Nicoleandmaggie recently posted…Link love
I’m interested in the books; JB is the about the age of my youngest.
No pets for us, I’m allergic. I get my doggy fix from my neighbor’s friendly dog, that always waddle over for belly rubs when they see me.
I’ll email you!
I remember reading Deep Wizardry as a kid… still remember the shark (Ed?) and the singing
Yes, Ed!