Archive for October 2007

Happy Birthday to Piper Perabo

If you’re interested in some geeky pop songs I recommend Jonathan Coulton. His homepage is an excellent example of a good (i.e., informative and accessible) artist homepage. My favourite songs (so far) are “The Future Soon”, “Ikea” and “I Feel Fantastic”.

Practical tips for statisticians (part 2)

Things STATA cannot do:

  • knead your feet
  • explain the meaning of your data
  • understand telepathically transmitted instructions
  • raise the dead
  • tap-dance
  • turn silver into gold*
  • love you back
  • moan at incompetent users

NB: This list is incomplete and applies to the versions 10 and lower.

*literally, that is; otherwise:

gen silver = 37
rename silver gold

99 Sekunden

Wer einen Blick (oder auch mehr) auf meine Diplom-Arbeit werfen will, kann dies im KOPS tun. Die Datenanalyse führte ich damals in der Uni auf den Rechnern auf Ebene B6 mit STATA durch. Kürzlich kaufte ich mir eine eigene STATA-Lizenz und hatte das Programm gerade erstmals voll in Betrieb. Zum Einstieg ließ ich die komplette Analyse der Diplom-Arbeit noch einmal durchlaufen:

. do master

Nach exakt 99 Sekunden waren alle Graphen geplottet und alle Analysen gerechnet. Sehr schön!

Die belgische Herberge

Unlike most people I didn’t like that movie. I found it incredibly ordinary and the characters were too smooth. The conflict of the lead character wasn’t resolved in the end, only postponed (until the even worse sequel). What remained was a pale depiction of the chaos and mayhem that’s all around me now.

If you are interested in a true online diary about my current experiences, please make yourself heard. I’m not going to write one, unless there is some kind of demand. I don’t mind sharing the ups and downs, but I think mediocrity would prevail. I mean, thousands of students are experiencing similiar stuff and I don’t think it’s necessary that I add another voice to the choir, because there won’t be many exceptional incidents, I guess; just an ordinary life.