Stats Blogs I Follow

These are the stats blogs that make me better at what I do.

For stats literacy - http://www.statschat.org.nz

This is the main one for serious statisticians. Andrew Gelman, a statistics professor and Bayesian statistician and programmer, critiques poor statistical practices. Very informative - http://andrewgelman.com 

For some advanced talk and a lot of useful links - http://simplystatistics.org

Deborah Mayo writes about philosophy of statistics - http://errorstatistics.com

Great learning resource for advanced statistical concepts - http://www.mii.ucla.edu/causality/

You might learn a few things from Daniel Lakens' blog - http://daniellakens.blogspot.in

A nice revision of important concepts with comics - http://statistically-funny.blogspot.in

More on probability theory - http://underpoint05.wordpress.com

Stats Blogs I Follow

Discover Blogs

I love the Discover Blogs - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/

The layout is simple & the blog posts are good reading.

The RSS options are versatile - you can subscribe not only to individual blogs but to specific topics, with an RSS feed for a topic comprising posts for that topic pulled from different blogs.

Here's are some posts pulled from the 'Living World' feed that I'm subscribing too.

1. New population of snow leopards found:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/07/here-be-snow-leopards/

2. Farmers use bees to keep elephants away. Interesting comments:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/07/14/guardian-bees-protect-kenyan-crops-from-roaming-elephants/

3. Baby parrots learn their 'names' from their parents:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/07/13/baby-parrots-learn-their-names-from-their-parents/

4. Tool use in Fish? This story has been doing the rounds:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/07/13/fish-join-the-list-of-tool-using-animals/

5. Newts' healing powers don't diminsh with age:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/07/12/newt-healing-factors-unaffected-by-age-and-injury/

6. Snails get around in birds' bellies:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2011/07/11/avian-airways-snails-get-around-in-birds-bellies/

Discover Blogs

The One With The Wrecks

Right, so here are two hilarious sites I've been following for a while:

Lovely Listing deals with poor real estate photo listings in the U.S.

Cake Wrecks deals with poorly decorated cakes (and sometimes good ones), mostly in the U.S.

It's not just the pictures of houses or cakes that I find funny. They are, by themselves, mildly amusing. No, it's the writers creatively stringing words together, creating puns and jokes to make an otherwise average, not so funny picture, really funny. That takes talent. 

Update: 22 Oct '09 

There, I Fixed It: Epic Kludges + Jury Rigs about poor and funny quick fix solutions (lots of tape involved) 

The One With The Wrecks

Thoughts and Observations

Some thoughts and observations since I returned to Mumbai.

1. I'm still in the process of putting up my travel diary entries on the blog. This will take a while. My pics are in the process of being put up on Facebook.

2. We've given up half our office floor space a week after I return, making some of us move. Who knew we just needed half the space to fit in the same number of people? On the down side, we were so used to occupying a large office that the place we're left with now seems a little small.

3. Three of my friends - MD, RV & PV - who were in the process of looking for new jobs when I left, are now happily back to work after successful job hunts.

Here's an interesting TIME article on using Twitter and Facebook to find a new job, and it's corollary (thanks to Gautam Ghosh).

4. I've been going through my mail, not all of which I was able to read while travelling, and have come across some interesting stuff:

• My friend FP sent me a lesson in innovation - How David beats Goliath
• Arvind Iyer observes that we don't live a moment for the moment anymore. A very valid point, especially for travellers who love photography.
  
• And for travellers who travel by air and book tickets online, the Kiruba incident makes for informative reading.

Thoughts and Observations

Fake IPL Player Blog

This Fake IPL Player blog could be a demonstration of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point theories. It's a phenomenon that's garnered too many followers in too short a time. Here are reports from Techtree, Rediff, the Guardian, and msn.

Cricket with Balls, King Cricket and indiatimes all have a series of posts on the subject, as do numerous bloggers.

And here's the Knight Rider's response.

And the latest from Yahoo is that he/she's now vanished.

Fake IPL Player Blog

Blogs - Amy and the Fifth Beatle

One of my favourite blogs seems to be defunct. Hope Arnold's O.K.

http://fairmaidenintrouble.blogspot.com/

Blogs - Amy and the Fifth Beatle

Things to do in Mumbai

Once upon a time, a man named Zishaan Hayath compiled a list of 100 Things To Do in Bombay. This list was subsequently republished both in BombayLives and in Mumbai Metblogs.

In another kingdom nearby, Mumbai Ready Reckoner sourced, modified and published a Time Out Mumbai list of 101 things to see and do in Mumbai.

A very weary traveller and explorer is happy to claim that he has accomplished half of all the things on the lists, and hopes to do the other half soon.

Things to do in Mumbai

Home Minister Resigns

Right, first off, I'm glad that our Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, is gone. What I'm not glad about is that he's off the hook so easily. There has to be some kind of accountability measure in place to ensure that he's done justice to his time in office, which I seriously doubt he has, and if that's the case, to ensure that he cools his heels in jail for a while due to incompetence. The same goes for all the others down the line who've failed in their duty to the nation. They need to have their belongings confiscated and sold off to pay off part of the damages from the terrorist attack. Also, I'm not happy that he's being turned into a scapegoat. Fingers need to be pointed in many directions, but right now, he's the only one in the blame limelight.

I have also found this blog, written by someone directly affected by the attack. Makes for interesting reading. I've been glued to a lot of blogs over the past few days. Blogs like John P Matthew, Gauravonomics, Desi Pundit, Death Ends Fun, Mumbai MetBlogs, and India Uncut have all kept me informed and opinionated.

Home Minister Resigns

Siege Over

The siege at the Taj, the only place which was still occupied by terrorists, ended this morning. More bodies have been found, and a total of 18 foreigners and 16 security personnel are now dead. No word yet on the number of Indian dead at the Taj, but the toll so far is 195.

Travelling to work yesterday was normal - the trains were packed as usual, though the usual banter and fighting was missing. Around lunchtime, rumours began to spread of fresh firing on the Central line, giving most people an opportunity to coax their bosses into letting them leave office early, resulting in me catching an almost empty train back home at 7.15, reminiscent of the train situation when there's a 'flood panic' on a really rainy day during the monsoon.

On another note, Gaurav Mishra has written a pretty informative post on the emergence of Twitter over blogging as an effective tool for citizen journalism using social media.

Siege Over

Terror Strike Update

As of now most of the anti terror operations seem to have come to a close and most hostages have been rescued. Rediff.com reports as of 10.17 P.M that the operations at Nariman House are over, with 5 hostages and 2 terrorists found dead. I'll bet that the Jewish hostages Israel were concerned about were among those 5. 15 policemen and 2 NSG personnel have lost their lives so far in operations across all sites, and fighting is still continuing at the Taj. The Trident has been freed, though the overall death toll has now risen to over 150.

The rescue efforts have not however prevented criticism (from Israel) and criticism about the Home Minister (from the U.S). The Home Minister seems to have also taken a well deserved beating on Rakesh Jhunjhunwalas's blog. I fail to understand a few things: One, how did just a handful of terrorists get into what were supposed to be well guarded locations. Where was security? Two, why are we so lax on terrorism. If the U.S can launch attacks on Pakistani soil, why can't we destroy terrorist camps in PoK? We're being ruled by a bunch of spineless politicians I'm afraid.

Terror Strike Update

Fading Away

Great blogs don't die, they just fade away...

I've noticed that a few of my favourite blogs (that also happen to be very well written) have been winding up recently, with few explanations provided.

The first one to bite the dust was A walk in the Clouds. Meghalomania's last post was on May 2, after which she and her alter ego's have stayed mysteriously silent.

And the next one was The Voice in my Head - Melody Laila shut shop on Aug 16 after some divine intervention.

Wonder which one's next.

Fading Away

An Englishman in Mumbai

Visited this blog recently. It's written by a British man who visits Mumbai. As always, it's interesting to note the difference in perspectives between cultures. I especially like the fact that the blog isn't biased and is as fair as can be.

http://englishmaninmumbai.blogspot.com/

An Englishman in Mumbai

Colour IQ Test

Found this interesting colour test through Rachel Hulin's blog. After clicking on this link - http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77 - I saw the screen below. The goal was to rearrange the squares on each line in colour progression.

Apparently the lower the score, the better. I got a perfect score i.e Zero.

Colour IQ Test

Computer and Systems Engineering: The software project life-cycle Cartoon

Found this funny cartoon on the Software Project Lifecycle:

Computer and Systems Engineering: The software project life-cycle Cartoon

Computer and Systems Engineering: The software project life-cycle Cartoon

How to Become an Early Riser

I came across this interesting set of articles on how to become an early riser. You can check them out here at Steve Pavlina’s blog -



http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/

In short, what Steve suggests is that we set a fixed time every morning at which to wake up but go to sleep the previous night only when we’re really sleepy. Our bodies will get into the habit of waking early eventually.

How to Become an Early Riser