I love the Likert package in R, and use it often to visualize data. The problem is that sometimes, I have sparse data, and this can cause problems with the package. This blog post shows you a workaround, and also, a way to format the final plot that I think looks really great!
14
Mar
Mar
With all this talk about “flattening the curve” of the coronavirus, I thought I would get into the weeds about what curve we are talking about when we say that. We are talking about what’s called an epidemiologic curve, or epicurve for short. And to demonstrate what an epicurve is and what it means, I […]
Public Health Alphabet Soup
Review of Boston University MPH Online Learning Modules for Teaching Graduate Level Public Health Online
10
Mar
Mar
If you are learning epidemiology or refreshing your memory of your formal study of it, you always want to have credible scientific definitions at hand of terms such as “measures of association”. Read my blog post for quick links to Boston University’s online educational module!
Public Health
Here is the Statistical Reason why Calculating the Coronavirus Mortality Rate is so Difficult
07
Mar
Mar
Since the coronavirus (COVID-19) registered on our public health radar as a communicable infectious disease amongst humans, countries try to calculate their coronavirus mortality rate (otherwise known as case fatality rate). As a result, many different mortality rates have been reported, causing confusion. This article from Business Insider reports country-wide mortality rates that range from […]
04
Mar
Mar
Snowflake is a new big data cloud back-end solution, and the company has been holding “Data for Breakfast” meetings in many different cities to introduce data scientists to their product. I went to the meeting held on March 4, 2020 at the Marriott Long Wharf in Boston, and here is my review. Not My First […]
02
Mar
Mar
I encourage those of you into data science and AI to sign up to receive digests from Data Science Central. I happened upon this web site when looking for some references for a book I am writing, and found some amazing articles. Since I’m into data science in and AI in healthcare, I was intrigued […]
Career Development
Physical College Classrooms are so Yesterday. Why Are We Still Studying Deeper Learning in Face-to-Face Settings?
17
Feb
Feb
My colleague who is a professor at Fitchburg State University studies deeper learning in face-to-face and online approaches in higher education. The idea is that if educators use deeper learning approaches, the students will learn more efficiently. Others have talked to me about deeper learning, and when I looked into it, I found that the […]
02
Sep
Sep
I’m one of those people in the “over age 45” demographic who is not against Instagram, but never really picked it up. Therefore, it’s probably amazing that I’m doing an Instagram campaign. As a user, I’m bad at taking pictures. My arms are too short for selfies. As a consumer, I’m bad at looking at […]
Career Development
What is Open Access Publishing in Scientific Journals and Why Should I Pay for it?
31
Aug
Aug
If you believe in open source software, then you probably also agree with open source publishing. Why is it so expensive compared to open source software? My blog post has the answers.
29
Aug
Aug
My initial answer: Not as much as I see people paying paying to publish research. I worked at the US Army for a while, and we hired consulting firms to help us publish peer-reviewed research papers. We had the data, and the questions – the consultants just had to analyze it and help us write […]
