Quantitude

In this week's episode Patrick and Greg have some serious fun with song lyrics they misunderstood at some point in their personal lives. They then use this as a thinly veiled excuse to explore some very basic statistical things that they have also misunderstood at some point in their professional lives. Along the way they discuss over-engineered front ends, mumbling, Scaramouche, mondegreens, Tony Danza, Bingo Jed, word salad,...

In today’s episode Patrick and Greg talk about outcomes that are count variables: when you need to worry about them and what you can do about them within your analytical models. Along the way they also mention: Bela Lugosi, Vlad the Impaler, Patrick the Poker, Count Chocula, Count von Count, drunken bar brawls, secret distributions, K!, bio breaks, second favorite child, Animal Farm, Cliff’s notes, A’s in band, and more equal zeros...

In this week's episode Greg and Patrick explore both the challenges and the opportunities of age-period-cohort analysis when trying to understand the complexities of human behavior over time. Along the way they also discuss bachelor night, Dave Brubeck, pay phones, street lights, global nuclear war, lazy thinking, I'm not a crook, biking to grandmas, HMS Pinafore, the Beatles, aggressive mice, trash snakes, and getting hi...

In this week's episode Greg and Patrick shine a flashlight on correspondence analysis and find that this is an extraordinarily cool yet often neglected method similar to factor analysis but applied to nominal contingency tables. Along the way they also discuss online personality tests, marital therapy, modern antibiotics, the Newlywed Game, grand slams, the advantages of being flexible, disrespecting nominal variables, formall...

In this week’s episode Greg and Patrick talk about loglinear models as a clever method to deconstruct the potential dependencies among two or more categorical variables. Along the way, they also discuss Children of the Corn, Mr. Magoo glasses, tighty whities, Fogo de Chão, blinded by hand soap, logarithms as drug mules, Euler Euler Euler, conspiracy boards and red yarn, M&M colors, depth perception problems, and apologies to Mr...

In this week's episode Greg and Patrick invoke the very personal interpretation of modern art as a framework for thinking about the exceedingly cool topic of rotation in exploratory factor analysis. Along the way they also discuss Venice Beach, haystacks, drug fronts, being insufferable, ignoramuses, .22's and stop signs, weak pivots, honking factors, pooping out matrices, the Gulf of America, twitchy eyeballs, big fat ze...

In this week's episode Greg and Patrick talk about group coding approaches, like dummy variables and effect code variables, for helping to analyze group differences within the larger general linear model. Along they way they also discuss hacking up a lung, made for audio faces, walking pneumonia, putting Vicks VapoRub on your feet, cards in your spokes, confusing rental cars, crash test dummies, what is your quest, 25-cent Nyq...

In this week's episode Patrick and Greg explore the fascinating world of suppressor variables which have the nearly magical, yet fully understandable, distinction of being unrelated to the dependent variable yet serving to enhance the predictive utility of other variables in the model. Along the way they also discuss  getting the giggles, giving away our secrets, Sigmund Freud, repressed variance, Greg's defense mechanism...

In today’s episode, Greg and Patrick talk about instrumental variables: what they are, how they help to make causal claims, and the many assumptions and challenges associated with them. Along the way they also mention: Festival of Side Dishes, pilot turkeys, gutsy bagpipes, charter schools, drama kids, RCT wieners, Space Force, licking a rainbow, Duranimals, draft lotteries, shoelace color, buttress, mother-in-lawing, and kazoo due...

This week Patrick and Greg talk about one of Patrick's favorite papers, which is a masterpiece not only in terms of its quantitative contribution in understanding the differential role of factor scores, but also as a model of clear and concise technical communication. Along the way they also mention Sandals and Motel 6, hotel hangers and glasses, hitchhikers under the bed, icebreakers with Roger, David Mamet films, Patrick’s c...

In this week's episode, Patrick and Greg discuss the benefits and limitations of generalized estimating equations as an approach to dealing with data that violate the assumption of independence. Along the way they also mention: goat rodeos, haunted houses, jump scares, liberos, Haikyu!!, Whoa Ace!, dadenfreude, Otto, cutting the baguette, this just in, American Idiot, bing bong bing bong, my dad drinks Pepsi, and fine print.

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In this week's episode Greg and Patrick talk about the advantages of recent structural after measurement work, allowing us to break apart traditional structural equation models to analyze the measurement and structural portions separately. Along the way they also discuss the baseball playoffs, fire pit face plants, the gluten cabinet, pumpkin inadequacy, a soupçon of ginger, free range muffins, fancy pants souffles, drunken wh...

In this week's episode Greg tries to ambush Patrick by bringing back the popular feature Pop Quiz, this time with a statistical acronym theme, only to pretty much get crushed by Patrick in the end. Along they way they also discuss: Wow That's Fantastic, QR codes and octogenarians, Questionable Rectum, catharsis, grassy knolls, petards, Sean ringtones, pity minutes, apologies to Roy Levy, bad clock management, asteroid Roo...

In this week's episode Patrick and Greg discuss Cattell's data box and try to better understand what it is, what it is not, and how we might make use of this in practice. Along the way they also discuss illegal knives, baseball cards, the Cubs and the Mariners, bicentennial quarters, how to load a dishwasher, horrible people, anal retentive friends, Flat Stanley, Dungeons & Dragons, pricing yourself out of business, n...

In this week's episode, Patrick and Greg talk about person-centered methods versus variable-centered methods with the punch line being that the historically contentious distinction between these two is unnecessary, unhelpful, and even counter-productive. Along the way they also mention lost luggage, Sabena Air t-shirts, the Inquisition, honey badger Americans, Fredrik Backman, punch lines, a frayed knot, the Keanu Reeves of st...

In this week's episode Greg and Patrick explore the surprisingly tricky topic of multiple choice items: how to write them, how not to write them, and giving a well written test the respect it deserves. Along the way they also discuss recognizing emotions, laying down 50 feet of rubber, glass animals, rewriting your kid's test, self-righteousness, Dora the Explorer, the Magna Carta, accidentally becoming a better teacher, ...

In this week's episode Patrick and Greg talk about different ways of assessing inter-rater agreement and reliability among two or more raters and the importance of doing so. Along the way they also discuss the summer Olympics, underdogs, monologue face-offs, Quincy Wilson, Boomers, the Soviet judge, biopsy subjectivity, the secret to college admissions reliability, skipping conference dinners, ripping a dive, Patrick's si...

In this week's episode, the first of Season 6, Greg and Patrick visit with Dr. Ethan McCormick, an Assistant Professor of Educational Statistics and Data Science in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. After catching up on Ethan's international adventures they discuss his recent work on using growth factors as predictors of distal outcomes and how pretty much everything he expected to find came out exact...