Sunday, March 18, 2018

Statistics Sunday: Blogging A-to-Z Theme Reveal

Tomorrow is the official day participants in the 2018 Blogging A-to-Z Challenge have been asked to announce their theme, but since my theme is statistically oriented and it's only one day, I'm doing it today! This year's theme will be...


I'll be blogging the way through my favorite statistical language/software package. Here's a preview of some of the topics I'll be covering:
  • D is for Data Frames - how to create and work with one (April 4)
  • I is for the ITEMAN package - an R library for classical item analysis (April 10)
  • M is for R Markdown Files - how to create PDFs and webpages (HTML) containing your R code and output plus narrative writeup using R Markdown tools in R Studio (April 14)
  • S is for the semPlot package - one of my favorite R packages and winner of the "where have you been all my statistical life?" award (April 21)
For each post, I'll let you know what tools (packages, resources) you'll need. You'll definitely want to install R and R Studio. And this post will help you get started if you're completely new to R. To help keep my blog nice and organized, and aid in finding previous posts, I've also added some new post tags:
  • R statistical package - posts about R or that reference the R language/package
  • R code - posts that contain R code and/or explain how to code something in R; obviously, every post containing R code will also be tagged as R statistical package, but the reverse is not true
  • Psychometrics - posts about psychometrics; many of my posts from this month will deal with using R for psychometric analysis
New tags will likely be added throughout the month, but these are tags I've frankly needed for a while.

One quick note (or disclaimer rather) that I probably should have posted long ago, but I think it's important this month as I begin recommending software, websites, and books on the topic: I write for and maintain this blog as a hobby. I don't make any money from my posts, nor do I receive any benefits for recommending something. So if I recommend a book, a piece of software, etc., it's because I genuinely think that thing is worthy of recommendation, not because it benefits me financially or otherwise. If at any point in the future that changes, I'll be sure to make that especially clear. I also don't currently and have no plans to show ads on the blog. I know others bloggers do to make a bit of money, but ads annoy me and I imagine they annoy you too! (I'm using Blogger as free hosting, though, so it's possible they may begin showing ads. If they do, I imagine I'll finally pony up and pay for hosting somewhere.)

Good news - Statistics Sunday posts will continue, on topics related to my Blogging A-to-Z posts, since the alphabet schedule generally doesn't include Sundays. This year, because of the way the calendar falls, one BATZ post will be on a Sunday, but other years, they usually give us all Sundays off. Because of that schedule, there will be one day with two statistical posts: the first day of the challenge. Statistical Sins will be on hold for the month.


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