P.Mean: Archive organized by date (created 2011-01-01).

This page lists files created in calendar year 2011. Also look at the archives for 2010, 2009, and 2008. You can also browse through an archive of pages organized by topic. Archives for the my old website (StATS) start at the Archive 2008 page. Archives from earlier years can be reached from there.

June 2011

1. P.Mean: How much work does that second reviewer have to do in a meta-analysis (created 2011-06-20). Someone asked about the process of using a second reviewer in a meta-analysis to abstract data from studies. The rationale for a second reviewer, of course, is to establish that there is no serious subjectivity involved with the recording of information from individual studies. By showing that two independent reviewers produced roughly comparable data set, you have established objectivity in the data abstraction step. The question arises, though, do you have to use the second reviewer on all studies, or can you just do this for a certain percentage of the studies. If so, is there a certain percentage that is generally accepted?
2. P.Mean: Looking for help to test software for monitoring accrual in a clinical trial (created 2011-06-16). I need some collaborators for a grant I am writing from people who conduct prospective clinical trials. I am working on methods to monitor patient accrual in clinical trials. Accrual means how rapidly do patients enter into a clinical trial. In my experience, researchers overpromise and underdeliver on the time frame in which they expect to recruit a certain number of patients.
3. P.Mean: Small business grant? Maybe not (created 2011-06-16). I want to document on this webpage, a general idea of where we might want to submit a grant to continue our work on accrual models. In particular, I was originally leaning towards an SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grant, but now I am not so sure. The impetus was attendance at a webinar on how to write a grant for SBIR.
4. P.Mean: How I became a skeptic (created 2011-06-15). I'm a big fan of the skeptic movement. If you're not familiar with this, it is a group of professional and amateur scientists who critically examine claims of fringe science areas like parapsychology, UFOs, and alternative medicine. So when a blog post on the James Randi Educational Foundation website called for people to share their stories of how people became skeptics, I wrote the following story.
5. P.Mean: Cartoon about placebos (created 2011-06-14). I drew a small cartoon about placebos. I know you think that this is drawn by a professional artist, but I did this. Really!
6. P.Mean: Which version of SPSS should you get (created 2011-06-03). I was showing a client how to use their version of SPSS to a variety of different things and when I went to run a logistic regression model, it wasn't there. Apparently, there are several versions of SPSS (I knew this already) and some of the versions do not include logistic regression (that I was surprised to find out). I had to research all the options and offer a recommendation. Here's a quick guide to what I learned by browsing through the SPSS site.
7. P.Mean: When you're stuck writing major sections of another person's grant (created 2011-06-02). I was helping someone write a grant when I got that request that I always dread, "Can you write this section of the grant." I hate those requests for a personal reason--I'd much rather tell someone else what to do than to actually do it myself. One of the great joys of consulting is being able to boss other people around. But there's a serious reason why I dislike this. I believe that a grant should be written by one person, with guidance of course by other experts. But one person needs to have at least a passing level of familiarity with each and every aspect of the grant; enough familiarity that they can write the entire grant. It also assures consistency of tone and language. But there are often reasons why this can't be done, and if you're stuck writing major sections of someone else's grant, you need to write your section of the grant so that it fits in well with the rest of the grant. There's a famous saying that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. You want to make sure that the completed protocol does not come out looking like a camel. If certain sections have abrupt transitions, use different terms for the same thing, and have radical changes in writing style, you've got problems. You won't get things perfect, and I certainly didn't with this project. But the closer you get, the better the grant will be.
8. P.Mean: New shortened structure for NIH grants (created 2011-06-02). I am working on an NIH grant looking at various Bayesian models for accrual. NIH changed the grant proposal format last year to a much shorter proposal. Good for them, I say. Here are some of the details that I'm reviewing prior to writing my grant proposal.
9. P.Mean: It's been a quiet year (created 2011-06-01). I was asked by my boss to document my scholarly activities for the past year. I used July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011 as the time frame (I don't anticipate a lot happening in the next 30 days). Here's what I wrote
   
   May 2011
   
   
10. P.Mean: A simple segmented linear regression model, borrowed from the BUGS manual (created 2011-05-25). I am interested in various extensions to the simple Bayesian model for accrual that Byron Gajewski and I derived and published in Statistics in Medicine. An important extension would be a segmented regression model for accrual that would allow for slow accrual at the start of the study, gradually rising to a steady state of accrual. Before I tackle that extension, I want to see how a simpler segmented regression model works in BUGS. I'm borrowing an example from the BUGS manual.
11. P.Mean: Using a binary coding trick illustrated by a Car Talk puzzler (created 2011-05-21). I often need to see how often certain variables and combinations of those variables appear in a data set. If the variable is binary, there is a trick for doing this that is illustrated by a Car Talk puzzler.
12. A simple hierarchical model for the Poisson distribution, borrowed from the BUGS manual (created 2011-05-20). I am interested in various extensions to the simple Bayesian model for accrual that Byron Gajewski and I derived and published in Statistics in Medicine. An important extension would be accrual in multi-center trials. A hierarchical model makes a lot of sense in this case, so I wanted to examine a simple hierarchical model that appears in the BUGS manual.
13. Promoting your consulting career in the era of Web 2.0 (created 2011-05-20). I was approached by a member of the planning committee for the American Statistical Association Conference on Statistical Practice about giving a talk at that conference. The talk would be an extension of a roundtable discussion I am giving at the Joint Statistical Meetings in 2011, Using Email Newsletters, Webinars, Blogs, And Social Media To Promote Your Consulting Career. After a telephone call this morning, I offered to prepare an abstract of a talk that I might give at this conference. I'm very flexible on the content of this talk, but I thought it would be a good idea to put my thoughts down in writing.
14. P.Mean: Yet another biography (created 2011-05-16). I'm asked often to provide a short biography that can be used as an introduction to a talk I am giving. It helps to keep track of these on my website. I have versions written in 2009, 2008, 2004, and 2002. Here's the latest biography.
15. P.Mean: What I'd look for in a new computer (created 2011-05-16). I am hardly an expert on computing, but I do try to help out when someone asks me about what sort of computer they should buy for statistical analyses. Here are some general guidelines that I offer. I'm assuming that you want a system that can run Windows and the advice here is not all that helpful if you are using the MacOS or Linux.
16. Is it ethical to provide statistical consulting on a disseration to a Ph.D. candidate (created 2011-05-11). Someone asked a hypothetical question about consulting assistance for a Ph.D. candidate. Clearly some assistance is okay and the question is when the work becomes so much that the work is no longer perceived as that of the Ph.D. candidate.
17. How independent consulting is different (created 2011-05-09). There's a huge difference between independent consulting and any of these other forms of consulting. I want to identify some of the major differences that I have experienced as an independent consultant.
18. P.Mean: Why is my standard deviation so small? (created 2011-05-02). I am helping someone with a projec that involves (among other things), computing averages of many Likert scale items. A Likert scale has different interpretations, but I use the term to mean a scale that has five items with a logical ordering. So the scale 1=Strongly disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Neutral, 4=Agree, and 5=Strongly agree is a Likert scale. This person ran some descriptive statistics on the individual items and on the mean of those items. The results are shown below with generic names for the individual items. I was asked why the average had a standard deviation that was so much smaller than the standard deviations of the individual items.
    
    April 2011
    
    
19. P.Mean: Resources for Comparative Effectiveness Research (created 2011-04-13). I attended an interesting webinar on Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). I always try to take notes during presentations like this, but my notes are often a poor amagalm of random thoughts and realizations. What I did find, though, during this webinar, were links to two important resources for CER.
20. P.Mean: Thinking about the title for my second book (created 2011-04-11). As I mentioned on an earlier webpage, Cambridge University Press has agreed to publish my second book. There were some suggestions, including a change in the proposed title to "Successful Research Projects: A Practical Guide for the Health and Social Sciences." I was not thrilled with this title and I was appreciative when my contact at Cambridge described that title as bland.
    
    March 2011
    
    
21. P.Mean: Does a wide confidence interval mean that my conclusions are all wrong? (created 2011-03-24). Dear Professor Mean, My confidence intervals are very wide. I do not know how to explain this. Does this mean that my results are likely to be wrong?
22. P.Mean: Macros in Stata (created 2011-03-08). I have just started using macros in Stata. I like R better, but Stata has a pretty good set of macro facilities, once you get the hang of things. Here is a simple example.
23. The nature of advice on email discussion lists (created 2011-03-08). I participate on several email discussion lists, and someone complained a bit about the advice he was getting. "So my question is if this forum is open for people like me? Can I ask questions and get advice without being patronised?" Here's what I wrote in response.
    
    February 2011
    
    
24. P.Mean: My special Zotero style (created 2011-02-22). I use Zotero to produce html code for the "Outside Resource" section of my category pages. It requires a special style which I have adapted. Here is the code for that style.
25. P.Mean: I won't serve on my IRB, but there is a way I can still help (created 2011-02-17). I had offered to help out our local IRB but was not careful to clarify how I could help. This resulted in me being appointed as an alternate member of the IRB. That's not a good role for me because of my conflict of interest. I work with a large number of clients through the Research and Statistical Consult Service (RSCS), and would have a hard time providing an impartial review of an IRB application that I had some role in developing. Also, for researchers who have not worked with the RSCS, if there protocols had major statistical flaws, I would be uncomfortable asking them to consult with the RSCS, as it might appear that I'm trying to artificially build demand for the RSCS. So I'll have to turn down this role. But there is another way I could help.
    
    January 2011
    
    
26. P.Mean: Good news about my second book proposal (created 2011-01-01). I got an email three days ago from my contact at Cambridge University Press. It looks like they want to publish my book!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. This page was written by Steve Simon and was last modified on 2011-01-03. Need more information? I have a page with general help resources. You can also browse for pages similar to this one at Category: Professional details.