The Coming Meltdown in College Education & Why The Economy Won't Get Better Any Time Soon

Reblogged from blog maverick:

This is what I see when i think about higher education in this country today:

Remember the housing meltdown ? Tough to forget isn’t it. The formula for the housing boom and bust was simple. A lot of easy money being lent to buyers who couldn’t afford the money they were borrowing. That money was then spent on homes with the expectation that the price of the home would go up and…

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What a great quote: "As an employer I want the best prepared and qualified employees. I could care less if the source of their education was accredited by a bunch of old men and women who think they know what is best for the world. I want people who can do the job. I want the best and brightest. Not a piece of paper." -Mark Cuban

A statistical research project: Weeding out the fraudulent citations

I hate impact factor….

Cheers.

MLB Rankings – 5/14/2012

StatsInTheWild MLB rankings as of May 14, 2012 at 8am.

Team	Rank	Change	Record	ESPN	TeamRankings.com
Texas	1	↑1	22-13	1	1
Atlanta	2	↑2	22-13	4	3
St. Louis	3	-	20-14	5	6
LA Dodgers	4	↑4	23-11	2	4
Baltimore	5	↓4	22-13	3	2
Washington	6	-	21-13	6	7
Toronto	7	-	19-16	9	9
Tampa Bay	8	↓4	21-14	7	5
NY Yankees	9	-	19-15	8	8
Miami	10	-	18-16	12	12
NY Mets	11	↑6	19-15	10	10
Cincinnati	12	-	17-16	14	11
Boston	13	↑8	15-19	23	21
Oakland	14	↑6	18-17	15	14
Philadelphia	15	↓2	16-19	19	23
Houston	16	↓5	15-19	20	17
San Francisco	17	↓1	17-17	17	20
Detroit	18	↑1	17-17	13	13
Chicago WSox	19	↓1	16-19	16	19
Seattle	20	↑2	16-20	25	18
Cleveland	21	↓6	18-16	11	15
LA Angels	22	↑1	15-20	21	26
Arizona	23	↓9	15-20	18	25
Pittsburgh	24	↑1	16-18	24	16
Chicago Cubs	25	↑2	14-20	27	22
Colorado	26	↓2	13-20	26	28
Milwaukee	27	↓1	15-19	22	24
Kansas City	28	↑1	13-20	28	27
San Diego	29	↓1	12-23	29	29
Minnesota	30	-	10-24	30	30

Past Rankings:

5/7/2012

4/30/2012

4/23/2012

4/16/2012

4/13/2012

Cheers.

Sedgewick slides on "Algorithms for the Masses"

Reblogged from God plays dice:

Robert Sedgewick has the slides for a talk, Algorithms for the Masses on his web site.

My favorite slide is the one titled “O-notation considered harmful” — Sedgewick observes that it’s more useful to say that the running time of an algortihm is ~aNc (and back this up with actual evidence from running the algorithm) than to have a theorem that it’s O(Nc) (based on a model of computation that may or may not be true in practice).

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"The serious point of the talk, though, is that everyone should learn some computer science, preferably in the context of intellectually interesting real-world applications. "

Sketches: How Mariano Rivera Compares to Baseball’s Best Closers

Sketches: How Mariano Rivera Compares to Baseball’s Best Closers

What If Every Pitcher In Baseball Were Mariano Rivera?

Cheers.

MLB Rankings – 5/7/2012

StatsInTheWild MLB rankings as of May 7, 2012 at 8am.

Team	Rank	Change	Record	ESPN	TeamRankings.com
Baltimore	1	↑5	19-9	6	1
Texas	2	↓1	18-10	2	2
St. Louis	3	↓1	17-11	5	6
Atlanta	4	↓1	18-11	7	5
Tampa Bay	5	↑3	19-10	1	3
Washington	6	↓1	18-10	4	4
Toronto	7	↑2	16-13	8	7
LA Dodgers	8	↓4	18-10	3	8
NY Yankees	9	↓2	15-13	9	9
Miami	10	↑10	14-14	22	17
Houston	11	↑12	13-15	23	15
Cincinnati	12	↑3	14-13	12	11
Philadelphia	13	↑3	14-15	14	20
Arizona	14	↓1	14-15	11	18
Cleveland	15	↑2	15-11	13	10
San Francisco	16	↓6	14-14	16	21
NY Mets	17	↓5	15-13	15	12
Chicago WSox	18	↓4	13-15	19	14
Detroit	19	↑2	14-13	10	13
Oakland	20	↑2	15-14	21	16
Boston	21	↓10	11-16	24	22
Seattle	22	↓4	13-17	26	19
LA Angels	23	↑3	12-17	18	27
Colorado	24	↓5	12-15	17	25
Pittsburgh	25	↓1	12-16	25	23
Milwaukee	26	↓1	12-16	20	26
Chicago Cubs	27	-	11-17	27	24
San Diego	28	-	9-20	29	29
Kansas City	29	-	9-18	28	28
Minnesota	30	-	7-20	30	30

Past Rankings:

4/30/2012

4/23/2012

4/16/2012

4/13/2012

Cheers.

A brief introduction to "apply" in R

Reblogged from What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate:

At any R Q&A site, you’ll frequently see an exchange like this one:

Q: How can I use a loop to [...insert task here...] ? A: Don’t. Use one of the apply functions.

So, what are these wondrous apply functions and how do they work? I think the best way to figure out anything in R is to learn by experimentation, using embarrassingly trivial data and functions.

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R tutorial videos

Reblogged from God plays dice:

People who want to learn the very basics of R may find these videos made by some Berkeley grad students useful.

Every U.S. Sports Championship, In Convenient Infographic Form

Cheers.