Ambitious analytics projects have a tangible risk of failure. Uncertainty breeds anxiety. There are known techniques to lower the uncertainty, guarantee failure and shift the blame onto others. We outline a few proven methods of analytics sabotage and their application. In honor of Steven Potter call this activity “statsmanship” which we define as pursing the goal of making your analytics group cry.
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Having worked with Unix (BSD, HPUX, IRIX, Linux and OSX), Windows (NT4, 2000, XP, Vista and 7) for quite a while I have seen a lot of different software tools. I would like to quickly exhibit my “must have” list. These are the packages that I find to be the single “must have offerings” in a number of categories. I have avoided some categories (such as editors, email programs, programing language, IDEs, photo editors, backup solutions, databases, database tools and web tools) where I have no feeling of having seen a single absolute best offering.
The spirit of the list is to pick items such that: if you disagree with an item in this list then either you are wrong or you know something I would really like to hear about.
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Categories: Computers, Opinion, Programming, Tutorials Tags: Excel, git, GnuPG, Keynote, Latex, Must Have Software, Papers, R, Software, Tools, TrueCrypt
On The Hysteria Over “The Cloud”
The frenzy of anticipation and opinion about “The Cloud” is so intense and so pointless it becomes “parody proof.”
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Today’s question is: “should your mom use Google search?” It it is a good thing that Google has directly told us that their motto is “don’t be evil,” as their systems are subtle and difficult to evaluate.
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Microsoft is once again going to try its hand at retail stores (for example see the following CNET article). From my experience I think this is going to be horrible. But it does not have to be- Microsoft (if it had the will) could produce a great store that is profitable and improves the world. Here is my quick history and wish list.
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A bit of a tempest in finance news involving accusations of sensitive code stolen from a major trading desk. For emerging details see:
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How do you get access to current and historical research articles if you are not affiliated with a university or large research organization? Our second public service article discusses some useful online research archives. Read more…
This is a public service article encouraging all of us to back up our data (which more and more is our lives). I sketch some methods and resources for doing this.
As more of our life becomes digital (work, finances, passwords, pictures, contacts,dairies,videos and email) we must be more diligent in backing up our data. If your hard drive fails at work you might lose some spreadsheets (and you might not lose anything if your IT department is on their toes) if you computer fails at home you lose your wedding album. Your hard disk will fail and try to take all of your data (life) with it- it is a matter of when not a matter of if. You want this to be an inconvenience, not a disaster. Become expert at backing up and take the time to help others.
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