gov1000-list January 2003

gov1000-list@lists.fas.harvard.edu

19 participants
44 discussions

by dkane＠latte.harvard.edu

This message appeared on the R-announce mailing list today. I am pleased to announce a major revision of the document "Statistical Tables and Plots using S and LaTeX". It is available at http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/s/doc/summary.pdf (76 pages, 500K). It should be of interest to those who produce statistical reports or those who use or would be interested in using LaTeX, the greatest productivity tool for document processing in my opinion. -- Frank E Harrell Jr Prof. of Biostatistics & Statistics Div. of Biostatistics & Epidem. Dept. of Health Evaluation Sciences U. Virginia School of Medicine http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat My comments: 1) Looks like good stuff. It will probably be helpful for 2001. 2) One complication is that Harrell makes much of his code available in some R packages that are not distributed as part the stanard R distribution. We didn't get into the issue of how you get other packages and how you install them in GOV 1000, but this is a skill that you might want to pick up. 3) Depending how useful you find this to (potentially) be, you can lobby the appropriate authorities to install these packages as part of the main R installation. Dave -- David Kane Lecturer In Government 617-563-0122 dkane(a)latte.harvard.edu Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

21 years, 2 months

further notice about 1000 account.

by Tao Li

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 11:26:33 -0500 From: Matthew Cox via RT <gov_support(a)backup.hmdc.harvard.edu> To: li7(a)fas.harvard.edu Subject: [hmdc.harvard.edu #2232] Gov 1000 accounts Expiring [alnelson(a)fas.harvard.edu - Tue Jan 28 17:24:00 2003]: > How will HMDC know who's taking Gov 2001 by January 31st? The class > doesn't actually meet until February 3... We'll extend the deadline for account removal until 2/7/2003 Make sure that they know they will not be working on course1 this semester and that they should be prepared to move their files to their FAS account even if they keep their HMDC account. Matt

21 years, 2 months

important notice about the gov1000 account!

by Tao Li

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 16:06:54 -0500 From: Matthew Cox via RT <gov_support(a)backup.hmdc.harvard.edu> To: li7(a)fas.harvard.edu Subject: [hmdc.harvard.edu #2232] Gov 1000 accounts Expiring *** Please Note: This is a reminder for anyone *not* taking GOV 2001. If you are taking GOV 2001: you can disregard this message. If you are *not* taking GOV 2001 Spring semester your account will be expired 1/31/2003. You will no longer have access to the HMDC course server or the files stored in your home directory. If you would like to backup the files from your home directory: you can copy the files from your account to a Zip disk, floppy disk or burn a CD-R using the HMDC Littauer lab. If you need continued access to the various statistical applications in a Linux environment: HMDC will be happy to move your account to another server. To facilitate this we need an email approval from a faculty member which outlines the needs and duration of the project. Please send all questions or comments to: gov_support(a)latte.harvard.edu

21 years, 2 months

final exam grades

by Dave Kane

Sorry for the delay, but we have finally finished up the final exam grades. Here are a few comments: 1) Overall, we are *extremely* pleased about the exams. I firmly believe that, for the vast majority of the students in the class, the pedagagical goals of the course (see the syllabus for details) have been accomplished. There are no more than a handful of your first-year peers at other elite programs who could have done what you did (take a zipped dataset, in a format that you had not seen before, process the data, apply a regression model from a published article to that data and then write up your results in a professional manner). The fact that you also can performing a matching exercise and produce some very nice looking graphics is icing on the cake. 2) As usual, we have ranked the papers from 1-18. But, as with the second midterm, the top papers are largely indistinguishable --- in the sense that the rankings might easily be made differently by other reasonable observors. In this case, however, the top quality went a lot deeper into the class then it did on the midterm. In fact, the top 10 papers all got A's. The were all excellent. Now, we did still rank them (and the ranks matter a very little), but a different grader might easily have had paper number 6, for example, as the best in the class. 3) As before, it mattered a lot to us that you followed the instructions. We wanted to see graphics (including use of lattice). We wanted to see some tables. We wanted you to discuss incumbency advantage. We wanted to see clean and fully documented R code. And so on. A failure to do the things that we specified was costly. 4) In terms of letter grades, we would say that 1-10 were A's; 11-14 were A-'s; 15-16 were B+'s, 17 was a B (failed to do the matching) and 18 was an F (didn't even try). 5) I would be happy to discuss your paper in detail with you, should you so desire. I could do this in person or on the phone. Those of you who met with me about the midterms know the drill on this. In essence, I made all sorts of scribbles in the margins as I did the grading. I would be happy to offer my thoughts on what you did well and on what you could have done better. 6) Please send your call sign to Tao (cc'ing Gary and me). 7) Here are the ranks: 1) Fluffy little hamster. 2) Mammalia Canivore . . . 3) Richard Winters 4) Manticore. 5) Herodotus 6) Vitalstatistix 7) Matchmaker 8) Dogjacket 9) Chico 10) Alice 11) Hedgehog 12) Baby Duke 13) Hopeful 14) J. Alfred Prufrock 15) Schmidt 16) Panoon 17) Zoolander 18) Shahriyar (Should feel free to contact either Gary or I in private if you want to talk about the F, at your discretion.) 8) The answer was somewhere in the vicinity 3%-5% depending on the assumptions that you made and the model that you used. Some people ended up far away from this, probably because of errors reading in and/or processing the data. As long as your R code was clean and well-documented, we didn't penalize this much (if at all). 9) My wife thought that Zoolander was the coolest call sign. 10) I would urge you to read at least a few of these papers, especially the top 5. This is probably the last chance in your career to see how 5 smart minds independently tackled a problem that you have spent a lot of time on. Although the best papers overwhelmingly came to the same conclusion, they attacked the problem in a variety of ways and made several interesting discoveries. There is something (different) worth checking out in almost every paper, which is why we post them on-line. Congratulations, as a class, on a job well-done. Dave -- David Kane Lecturer in Government 617-563-0122 dkane(a)latte.harvard.edu

21 years, 2 months

Message from the office of Professor Gary Orren

by chris_rappley＠ksg.harvard.edu

TO: Gov1000 Students FROM: Gary Orren Please see the posting below. If you are interested in this research position, please send your resume to Professor Orren, in care of his assistant: chris_rappley(a)harvard.edu. Research Assistant Wanted Spring and/or Summer Assist Kennedy School Professor Gary Orren with his study of the science and art of persuasion. Looking for a student to analyze survey data. Experience with QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS is necessary, including descriptive statistics, regression/econometrics, and the SPSS software package (or its equivalent). Good judgment and an aptitude and taste for data analysis are necessary. Research will include: analysis, writing, library and web research, and related tasks. Graduate student or undergraduate. Flexible hours. Competitive Salary. Students who qualify for Work Study are urged to apply. Non-Work Study students with strong qualifications are also encouraged to apply. E-mail your resume to Professor Orren, in care of his assistant: chris_rappley(a)harvard.edu. Phone: 617-495-3534. _______________ Chris R. Rappley Faculty Assistant to Professor Gary Orren Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University 79 JFK Street, L307 Cambridge, MA 02138 617.495.3534, Fax: 617.496.5960 chris_rappley(a)harvard.edu

21 years, 3 months

final paper

by dkane＠latte.harvard.edu

As you all know from the syllabus, the paper for GOV 1000 is due today (20 minutes ago). The vast majority of you are taking GOV 2001 and are, therefore, exempt from this requirment. If you did decide to do the paper, please give the hard copy of the paper to Jarvonica at the front desk of CBRSS. Please e-mail a pdf version to david.d.kane(a)fmr.com. (I don't think that my account on latte would allow me to receive large pdf files.) Grades on the final will be forthcoming soon. Dave -- David Kane Lecturer In Government 617-563-0122 dkane(a)latte.harvard.edu Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

21 years, 3 months

Re: [R] Graphics related questions

by David Kane <David Kane

So, r-help answered your question in 12 minutes. Not bad, heh? ;-) Again, you'll find that you get better answers (on average), if you provide the code that creates your example -- something like: > x <- data.frame(State = c("MA", "CT", "TX", "AK"), Ratio = c(1.3, 1.02, 0.9, 0.77)) > x State Ratio 1 MA 1.30 2 CT 1.02 3 TX 0.90 4 AK 0.77 > Also, you should always report what version of R you are using by providing the results to R.version. At work, this is > R.version _ platform sparc-sun-solaris2.6 arch sparc os solaris2.6 system sparc, solaris2.6 status major 1 minor 6.1 year 2002 month 11 day 01 language R for me. Dave Deepayan Sarkar writes: > On Tuesday 21 January 2003 02:19 pm, Nirmala Ravishankar wrote: > > While using xyplot or barchart, how does on move the x or y axis? I am > > trying to plot ratios ranging from 0.77 to 1.3 in a bargraph, with the y > > axis at x = 1. I want ratios greater than 1 to appear as on the right side > > of the y-axis and the ratios less than 1 to appear on the left. > > > > > > My dataframe US looks like this > > > > State Ratio > > > > MA 1.3 > > CT 1.02 > > TX 0.9 > > AK 0.77 > > > > When I do barchart(formula = State ~ Ratio, data = US), the y axis is > > positioned at x = 0.7. How do I move it to x = 1? > > This feature is currently missing (but planned for the future). This was > discussed a while back, and a panel function which does this was posted. Try > looking at the thread starting with > > https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2002-December/052506.html > > Deepayan > > -- David Kane Geode Capital Management 617-563-0122 david.d.kane(a)fmr.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

21 years, 3 months

Sorting dataframes

by Nirmala Ravishankar

Hey Folks, Do any of you remember how to sort a dataframe based on single numerical variable? I know this question came up earlier in the semester but I don't remember the answer any more........ Thanks, Nirmala

21 years, 3 months

Second time lucky

by Nirmala Ravishankar

Okay, it worked the second time. I did vncserver -kill again and got a new number through vncserver and it seems to like this one better. So, here are the steps: vncserver -kill: ## (your vnc session number) vncserver This should give you a new number which you can use to start a new VNC session. - Nirmala On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Mark Somos via RT wrote: > > Doesn't work for the second time, though. I open SCRT with SSH protocol to > course1, and when I try to open VNC, the VNC Viewer says: > > Could not start port forwarding from local service 127.0.0.1:3868 to > 127.0.0.1:5932. > > Reason: The channel could not be opened because the connection failed. > Server error details: > Connection refused. > > > On Mon, 20 Jan 2003, Matthew Cox via RT wrote: > > > > > [somos(a)fas.harvard.edu - Mon Jan 20 14:43:09 2003]: > > > > > It works, got a new number and everything. Many thanks, > > > > Please post your success along with the exact steps you took to the > > gov100 mailing list. > > > > Thank you. > > > > Matt > > >

21 years, 3 months

Strange Error

by Nirmala Ravishankar

Hey folks, I get the following message when I try to plot a graph in R. It tells me I am not authorized to connect to the server -- but I am already connected and using R -- and complains about not being able to start "device X11." Have any of you encountered this before? Do you have any idea what this is about? Yours Truly, Confused Nirmala plot(USm$meanmi, USm$diff) Xlib: connection to ":19.0" refused by server Xlib: Client is not authorized to connect to Server Error in X11(display, width, height, pointsize, gamma, colortype, maxcubesize, : unable to start device X11 In addition: Warning message: unable to open connection to X11 display`'

21 years, 3 months

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gov1000-list January 2003