romunov's blog et al

Statistical analysis stack exchange

romunov — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 06:59:46 +0000

We need your votes to put Statistical analysis stack exchange site into a testing, beta phase. If you like for instance StackOverFlow (I’m especially fond of the R tag) or other stack exchange sites, please drop your vote. Registration is super easy. If you wield a google account, you can register in two clicks!

Cast yer vote here: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis?referrer=kAwcbvcUyIY1

Besedilo in akordi za pesem Planet Galgala (Slon in Sadež)

romunov — Sun, 23 May 2010 14:43:24 +0000

Ker nikjer na internetu ni bilo lahko dostopnih akordov in besedila za Planet Galgala avtorjev Slon in Sadež, sem se odločil, da dam vkup pričujoči dokument.

Planet Galgala - Slon in Sadež

Word wrap in Eclipse

romunov — Sun, 23 May 2010 10:38:13 +0000

If you’re by any chance working in Eclipse (or even StatET plugin), you might appreciate word wrapping of your text. This does not come out-of-the-box, though. You will have to use the Eclipse’s Install new software wizard. Enter http://ahtik.com/blog/projects/eclipse-word-wrap/ as the URL and install Virtual Word Wrap. An option to Virtual word wrap will appear if you right click in your main text editing area.

How I managed to solve the issue of calling for help from within Eclipse (StatET)

romunov — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:38:29 +0000

At home, I use Eclipse to write my R code. Package StatET is the utility of choice for this task. For some reason, calling help (for instance ?read.table) wouldn’t produce the desired effect of opening my web browser and navigating to the specific page of the help file. After searching high and low and trying to figure out what’s wrong with my Eclipse/StatET, I solved the issue by specifying help_type, which was, for some reason, NULL (which explains no action at all)?! The command to fix it is

options("help_type" = "html")

Using smarts saves time

romunov — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 06:51:27 +0000

Wheew, what a relief. No, Obama hasn’t changed course, nor did Dick Cheney experience a fatal hart attack. I just managed to solve my problem through wits and cunning. I’m posting this mostly for myself, so I may remember how to deal with this the next time.

I have a 35 page (that’s A4 pages) of scientific references that I need to publish on a website dedicated to subterranean amphipods. Posting references is so special because I need to add custom tags before and after each paragraph so that the references are indented, which makes them easier to read. I also needed to add html tags before and after each italicized word (species names).

I started digging into the world of writing an OpenOffice.org macro, which could quite elegantly solve my problem. Snag number one: I’m not experienced in BASIC (which is the programming language used). A pretty big snag, I would say. I then again did it all wrong and first posted a question on Stack Overflow and then started browsing for answers (I should have done the other way around). After 10 seconds of browsing the Stack Overflow, the answer struck me out of the blue.

What I did was I saved the file in .XML. What this does is basically save all the information on the page ready to be posted on the internet. Which means every paragraph is defined, all bold, italicized and underlined elements are recognized and so forth… It was then just a matter of Find and Replace to switch the default XML tags (tags like P and I) to my custom tags. Voila!

Alex Jones on CNN

romunov — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 21:30:21 +0000

You just have to hear this. Alex Jones calling out CNN and Anderson Cooper on their own show. Unfortunately the thing wasn’t live and they’ll probably edit it down, but AJ and the crew made the right decision to film his whole response. See videos below.

Globalno segrevanje najboljšega soseda

romunov — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:55:21 +0000

Pred nekaj dnevi me je pri rednem obisku največjega Mercator centra v Dravljah (Ljubljana) pozdravila čisto gantz nova razstavi super foto-montaž fotografij. Ne vem točno kaj je cilj razstave, ampak če sem malo demogoški in se pošalim, je zgolj zato, ker EU daje sredstva za promoviranje globalnega segrevanja.

Kot mlajši znanstvenik pa od mene morala zahteva, da sem do vsega skrajno skeptičen, kot zavesten državljan in prebivalec planeta Zemlje pa to še posebej velja, ko zadevo v roke vzamejo politiki in na njo praktično onanirajo. Za vse, ki o znanosti ne razmišljajo vsak dan naj le povem, da znanost ni rigidna struktura in debata glede nekatere stvari nikoli ni “končana”, kot radi razglašajo nekateri.

Da se vrnem nazaj na stvar. Ko sem prvič šel mimo razstave sem bil zelo impresioniran nad dobrimi fotomontažami. O zadevi si nisem mislil nič in odšel naprej po nakupih. Na poti nazaj pa sem se le priklonil in pričel brati tekst na panojih in pod slikami. Kot biolog najprej nisem vedel ali naj se smejim, jokam ali pa letim po defibrilator, ki je stacioniran na stebru na drugi strani Mercatorja. Sicer se vseh izjav v tem postu ne bom dotaknil, se bom pa osredotočil na eno izjavo, ki pravi, da Zemlja ni bila tako vroča zadnjih 50 milijonov let (to je 50.000.000 let). To je ravno malo po tem, ko je izumrla večina dinozavrov (ostali so samo ptiči, ki so zelo sorodni skupini dinozavrov, v katero spada tudi famozni Tyrannosaurus rex). No, pa poglejmo, če obstaja možnost, da je to resnica posebne vrste (laž)!

Odsurfal sem na spletno stran NOAA (to je ameriški “statistični urad” za satelitske in druge podatke), ki shranjuje temperaturne (in druge podatke) iz preteklosti. Konkretno gre za dataset (tako pravimo podatkom) z Greenlandije, ki prikazuje relativno temperaturo (relativno na današnje razmere) za zadnjih 50.000 let (to je 0.05 milijonov let). Podatke sem uvozil v program R (verzija 2.10.1, linux verzija) in izrisal graf. Če bi kdo rad preveril kodo (da nisem morda kaj goljufal), naj me kontaktira.

Poglejmo, kaj se je na Greenlandiji dogajalo zadnjih 400 let. Opazimo, da se je v zadnjem stoletju in pol temperatura dejansko povzpela nad “povprečje”. In to kar skokovito!

Pa poglejmo še malo bolj v preteklost. Recimo 800 let. Vidimo, da gre temperatura gor in dol in GOOOR in DOOOL. Opazimo, da obstaja verjetnost, da je bila Zemlja kdaj tudi že toplejša.

Ker temperatura tako niha in s trendi zadnjih nekaj 100 let nismo zadovoljni, poglejmo kaj se dogaja zadnjih 50.000 let. Opazimo, da je temperatura v zadnjih 10.000 letih nekako poskočila, kar sovpada s koncem zadnje ledene dobe. Pred tem je bila temperatura nižja (kot bi lahko sklepali iz imena ledena doba) od današnje in kar lepo nihala (temu strokovno rečemo “oscilirala”, zato da nas povprečen človek ne razume).

Vprašati se moramo, ali gre to za nekaj unikatnega (neponovljivega), ali pa gre morda za celo cikličen pojav?
Pa pojdimo ponovno na spletno stran NOAA-e in si poglejmo temperaturne podatke (zdaj že znamo reči “dataset”) iz Vostoka (Antarktika, torej na drugi strani Zemlje) za zadnjih 400.000 let (0.4 milijona let, kar niti približno ni 50 milijonov let). Za vaš vizualni užitek sem pobarval zadnjih 50.000 let rdeče, da si lahko predstavljate za koliko let nazaj smo si pogledali podatke z Greenlandije. Podatkov za zadnjih dveh stoletih se s tega grafa praktično ne vidi. Ali mi lahko nekdo objasni zakaj je današnji trend segrevanja ali ohlajanja tako poseben, da moramo zapravljati davkoplačevalski denar za to propagando (v najslabšem pomenu te besede)?

Flight 253

romunov — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:49:59 +0000

A blog by the Haskell family is a place for all you ever wanted to know (and more) about the Flight 253, the flight that carried the Underwear bomber on the Christmas day in 2009 from Amsterdam to Detroit. Kurt and his wife were eye witnesses to the event and offer an inside scoop which would otherwise go unnoticed. Someone has tried to silence them or bury their stories, but thanks to their profession and wits, they have managed to fight this off so far.

And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free (as engraved at the CIA headquarters).

Swine flu, WHO, hoax. You do the math

romunov — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:07:08 +0000

While we’re observing IPCC slowly flying off the radar (into the ground), there is another bleep on the radar that is being missed or ignored by most. It’s the swine flu (do you still remember it?) and the way WHO reacted to the threat.

For those of you who remember, the outbreak started in Mexico and slowly spread over the globe. Even after WHO prematurely proclaimed this pandemic (it was still “localized”) ban on air travel was not put into place. I guess these sort of things are not pretty high on to-do list when you’re being faced by A FUCKING VIRUS THAT IS GONNA KILL YOU, YOUR FAMILY AND RAPE YOUR PETS. Nail one into the coffin of the world “authority” responsible for keeping up healthy and ready and willing to slave for the bank.

Fortunately there are some sane people out there, who wield some sort of power and had an opportunity to investigate. Chair of council of Europe’s sub-committee on health, Wolfgang Wodarg has let an investigation into the 2009 swine flu outbreak and here are a few nuggets from here (visit the link for the entire story and audio of the visit on Alex Jones Show):

Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, outgoing Chair of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health Wolfgang Wodarg said that his panel’s investigation into the 2009 swine flu outbreak has found that the pandemic was a fake hoax manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in league with the WHO to make vast profits while endangering public health.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a 47 nation body encompassing democratically elected members of parliament, began hearings last month to investigate whether the H1N1 swine flu pandemic was falsified or exaggerated in an attempt to profit from vaccine sales.

How to do one-way ANOVA

romunov — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:34:41 +0000

Ever wondered how to compare group means (when you have more than two groups) and test if there is a difference between them? One way ANOVA does just that. You can compare group means between each other and avoid a Type I error you would get if you compared the groups pair-wise with a t-test. Each group can have only one factor, though (if you happen to have more factors, see two-way ANOVA, for example). To find out how to do ANOVA in R (freeware, downloadable from http://www.r-project.org/) see post @ SEDASM.