P.Mean: Archive organized by date (created 2012-01-01).

This page lists files created in calendar year 2012. Also look at the archives for 2011, 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.

January 2012

7. P.Mean: Promoting your consulting career in the era of web 2.0 (created 2012-01-27). I am giving a short course in February, "Promoting Your Consulting Career in the Era of Web 2.0." Here is an outline of what I will talk about.

6. P.Mean: Honorable mention for my R code on accrual (created 2012-01-25). Back in October 2011, I entered a contest sponsored by Revolution Analytics, "Applications of R in Business." I spiffed up a bit of my R code on patient accrual and submitted it with a brief explanation and some simple examples. It turns out that I was one of the five honorable mentions in this contest, which was a pleasant surprise, as I am just an amateur at programming in R.

5. P.Mean: Arguing with the material in an ethics training program (created 2012-01-12). I'm taking one those web based ethics training programs that is required by the UMKC IRB. It's not a punishment for something bad I did. The IRB requires this from all researchers. I'm probably one of the worst people to take these programs because I disect every assertion and look for the data behind every claim. It takes me forever to finish these things. Anyway, here's an example of the type of thing that drives me crazy.

4. P.Mean: What to report when SPSS says the p-value is zero (created 2012-01-09). Dear Professor Mean, I'm looking at some SPSS output where the p-value is listed as .000. How should you report the value? P < .001? P < .0005? P < .0001?

3. P.Mean: Is sample size justification really different for animal studies compared to human studies? (created 2012-01-06). Dear Professor Mean, I've spent my entire career (so far) in developing statistical analysis plans for human subjects research. Recently, a neuroscientist who performs experiments on rats asked me to assist in a power analysis. My conversation with him reminded me of that YouTube video (Biostatistics vs Lab Research): "I think I only need 3 subjects..." In his case, he seemed fixated on needing only 6 rats per group---which is what he had always done in the past. Are the rules for sample size justification different for animal studies than for human studies?

2. P.Mean: Post hoc power persists becauses peer-reviewers demand it (created 2012-01-04). I was in the middle of writing a grant looking at best research practices and wanted to give an example of when best practices weren't being followed. The easiest example to find was the use of post hoc power calculations. There's been at least two decades of criticism of this practice and yet it still occurs. The example I found, however, has an interesting twist to the tale.

1. P.Mean: A very silly graph (created 2012-01-01). I know I shouldn't let this bother me, but I saw a graph today that was wrong on so many different levels. Let me explain.

Creative Commons License 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.