Tag: statistical analysis

Managing a statistical analysis project – guidelines and best practices

In the past two years, a growing community of R users (and statisticians in general) have been participating in two major Question-and-Answer websites:

  1. The R tag page on Stackoverflow, and
  2. Stat over flow (which will soon move to a new domain, no worries, I’ll write about it once it happens)

In that time, several long (and fascinating) discussion threads where started, reflecting on tips and best practices for managing a statistical analysis project.  They are:

On the last thread in the list, the user chl, has started with trying to compile all the tips and suggestions together.  And with his permission, I am now republishing it here.  I encourage you to contribute from your own experience (either in the comments, or by answering to any of the threads I’ve linked to)

Continue reading “Managing a statistical analysis project – guidelines and best practices”

Want to join the closed BETA of a new Statistical Analysis Q&A site – NOW is the time!

The bottom line of this post is for you to go to:
Stack Exchange Q&A site proposal: Statistical Analysis
And commit yourself to using the website for asking and answering questions.

(And also consider giving the contender, MetaOptimize a visit)

* * * *

Statistical analysis Q&A website is about to go into BETA

A month ago I invited readers of this blog to commit to using a new Q&A website for Data-Analysis (based on StackOverFlow engine), once it will open (the site was originally proposed by Rob Hyndman).
And now, a month later, I am happy to write that over 500 people have shown interest in the website, and choose to commit themselves. This means we we have reached 100% completion of the website proposal process, and in the next few days we will move to the next step.

The next step is that the website will go into closed BETA for about a week. If you want to be part of this – now is the time to join (<--- call for action people). From being part in some other closed BETA of similar projects, I can attest that the enthusiasm of the people trying to answer questions in the BETA is very impressive, so I strongly recommend the experience. If you won't make it by the time you see this post, then no worries - about a week or so after the website will go online, it will be open to the wide public. (p.s: thanks Romunov for pointing out to me that the BETA is about to open)

p.s: MetaOptimize

I would like to finish this post with mentioning MetaOptimize. This is a Q&A website which is of a more “machine learning” then a “statistical” community. It also started out some short while ago, and already it has around 700 users who have submitted ~160 questions with ~520 answers given. From my experience on the site so far, I have enjoyed the high quality of the questions and answers.
When I first came by the website, I feared that supporting this website will split the R community of users between this website and the area 51 StackExchange website.
But after a lengthy discussion (published recently as a post) with MetaOptimize founder, Joseph Turian, I came to have a more optimistic view of the competition of the two websites. Where at first I was afraid, I am now hopeful that each of the two website will manage to draw a tiny bit of different communities of people (that would otherwise wouldn’t be present in the other website) – thus offering all of us a wider variety of knowledge to tap into.

See you there…