Huh?

A big part of my day-to-day involves data analysis, usually statistical data analysis. The stats scene has been in some flux lately, at least in the fields I work in, and interestingly, I think a lot of that has resulted, directly or indirectly, from the availability of the R statistical language/package. Long story short, it has increased accessibility to methods that are not all that new in the scheme of things, but which have not been terribly accessible. More on all that another day.

Today, the topic is Bayesian stats. The word “Bayesian” is a bit of a buzz-word for a wide range of different topics in computational and statistical work, but despite this, it’s a really important modern approach to data and analysis. What exactly is it, and what’s the big deal? Damned if I know, but in an ongoing series of posts, I intend to find out a lot more, and share my thoughts here.

I’m using NaBloPoMo as an excuse to kick-start this blog into a little more action. Let’s see if I can keep it up the whole month…

R is a wonderful thing. It’s also managed to consume my life, for better or for worse. I’ve been learning and working with R for about 5 years now, since finishing my PhD, and it’s had a profound impact on my work, in a good way.

So naturally, I like to spread the love. I’ve gotten a few friends hooked, and I like to help out other folks with what I’ve learned when I can. Tonight I had a nice opportunity to give an intro tutorial to a group of grad students. Boy, are my teaching chops rusty!

Alright, I’m about a decade or so late, but I’m starting a blog.

“Shoestring Psycholing”, really? Yeah, well…

For some reason this name has stuck in my head for a few years now. I like the idea of science, especially language science, being something accessible and open to all sorts of people. More and more, the tools to do even things like experimental psycholinguistics has become cheaper and easier. So the idea of “dirt cheap psycholinguistics” is somehow appealing, and Shoestring Psycholing is a kind of near-rhyme with a catchy rhythm… anyhoo, I’m sure this is one of those things I’ll look back on and groan at, but it’s been stuck in my head for so long, I might as well get it out in the open.

That’s what this is all about, by the way: getting things out of my weird little head and out into the open. Hopefully along the way it’ll provide something interesting or helpful for someone else. In the meantime, thanks for tagging along for the ride!