The Pain of Being a Statistician

Posted on September 20, 2010 by rpg

I’m been meaning to write something non-trivial, but until then here’s something to entertain you. I’ve not had experiences this bad, and most of my collaborators are really good about discussing things, but sometimes…

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Posted in Silliness | 4 Comments

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

Posted on August 27, 2010 by rpg

Nicking Chad’s idea, as it’s Friday, tell me (us?) something I (we?) don’t know.

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Posted in Silliness | 8 Comments

Semiotics and Statistics

Posted on August 16, 2010 by rpg

Semiotics is the study of signs, probably most famous because Umberto Eco wrote a book based around it. One important distinction that semiotics makes is between the sign and the object, i.e. the thing the sign refers to. This distinction was illustrated by René Magritte in his painting The Treachery of Images (‘La Trahison des Images’):
Magritte La Trahison des ImagesThis is not a painting

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Posted in Science Blogging | 63 Comments

Comments On…

Posted on August 11, 2010 by rpg

There’s been rather a lot of meta-blogging recently, for a variety of reasons. So if you’ve had enough of that, here’s a blog you might like to read instead. The rest of you should be ready to be interactive, as this is about blog comments.

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Posted in Meta, Science Blogging | 23 Comments

The Next Great Adventure at This Scientific Life

Posted on August 2, 2010 by rpg

I’ve got a new blog!
tsl_romeojuliet_harryp.png
I sneaked in under their radar, and I’m now also blogging at the newest, shiniest (at least for this week) science blogging platform – Scientopia.
I’ll be blogging along with my wife, GrrlScientist, on our new blog, called This Scientific Life. I don’t know exactly how this will work out, it’ll be an experiment. The Beast didn’t seem particularly bothered, though.
HotBeast.JPG
Our first post is up. I wanted to call it Something Wicked This Way Comes (the post, not the blog), but I was over-ruled. Probably a good thing.
Don’t worry, though. I will still be blogging here – the new digs are there for me to try out blogging for the more general public.
Anyway, have a look around. It should be obvious that this is a product of the exodus from ScienceBlogs, but there are some other non-Sb bloggers there too. Have a look around, and join the conversation. It should be fun!

Posted in Science Blogging | 5 Comments

What’s an ecological niche, mummy?

Posted on July 30, 2010 by rpg

I’m sat in a workshop about the ecological niche. One thing we’ve been discussing is what people understand the ecological niche to mean (don’t worry, we discussed more concrete things too).

(source)
So, here’s a question for you (particularly ecologists), what do you mean by “the niche”? How do you understand it? There’s no right or wrong answer – we’re interested in the breadth of opinion.
There are also some deeper issues that we’d like to bring up too, so I’ll follow up in the comments.

Posted in Research Blogging | 26 Comments

Why can’t they do this at every conference?

Posted on July 28, 2010 by rpg

From, inevitably, the Improbable Research blog.

Posted in Silliness | 9 Comments

My Application to Join ScienceBlogs

Posted on July 20, 2010 by rpg

Scienceblogs seems to be creating space in their blogroll for new bloggers, so now seems a good time to apply to join the collective. Being bloggy and everything, it seems only right to send my application as a blog entry. So here’s my open letter to the cat herders at ScienceBlogs.

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Posted in Science Blogging | 22 Comments

Scientific article download costs | Code for Life

Posted on July 18, 2010 by rpg

Just a quicky…
Grant Jacobs has just done a quick survey of the amounts charge for downloads of scientific papers. The cheapest charge $7, and most were $20 or more, the most expensive being $50 – and some only gave access for 1 or two days (obviously open access journals are not included).
This makes me wonder two things:
(1) how much money do journals get this way, and who (if anybody) buys?
(2) what’s the pricing model for access to individual papers?
Grant’s interest was peeked piqued when he saw a paper available for $0.99: would this iPhone appstore model rake in more money? I could see me paying €1 for a pdf of a paper I wanted, and it might reduce the “anyone out there got this paper” grey market.
I’m too lazy to do any research – does anyone know anything more than I do?

Posted in Science Publishing | 16 Comments

The Power of Rhinoplasty

Posted on July 3, 2010 by rpg

Via the Improbable Research Blog (the essential resource for the sillier end of science), we learn of the latest advance in quackery quantum theory: the unhappening machine.

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Posted in Silliness | 2 Comments