Poor man’s integration – a simulated visualization approach

Following article discusses presentation of a function that can integrate an arbitrarily-defined curve using a less than quantitative approach, or in other words, poor man’s integration. If you are up to speed on the basics of calculus, you may recognize this approach as Monte Carlo integration. 

http://www.r-bloggers.com/poor-mans-integration-a-simulated-visualization-approach/

FasteR! HigheR! StrongeR! – A Guide to Speeding Up R Code for Busy People

Code optimization is a matter is a matter of personal taste and priorities. There may be some ways of writing code that are better or worse, and there are definitely ways that will make it run faster, but before you dive into optimization, you may read the following:

http://www.r-bloggers.com/faster-higher-stonger-a-guide-to-speeding-up-r-code-for-busy-people/

Interesting articles on Bayesian Inference

The American Statistician is providing free access to the original articles as well as several comments, discussions and rejoinder pieces on Bayesian Inference for 90 days. Follow this link to begin your access today:
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/utas20/67/1

Below are a few of the articles included in this offer:

"Not Only Defended But Also Applied": The Perceived Absurdity of Bayesian Inference, Andrew Gelman and Christian P. Robert

Comment: Bayesian Inference: The Rodney Dangerfield of Statistics?, Stephen Stigler

Discussion: Bayesian Methods: Applied? Yes. Philosophical Defense? In Flux, Deborah G. Mayo

Data Science of the Facebook World

A remarkable look at the Facebook world, and the trajectories of Facebook lives. Plus a great example of data science in the Wolfram Language.

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/04/data-science-of-the-facebook-world/

Dust Off Your Math Skills: Actuary Is Best Job

CareerCast.com, a career website owned by Adicio Inc., ranked 200 jobs from best to worst based on five criteria: physical demands, work environment, income, stress, and hiring outlook

http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/04/22/dust-off-your-math-skills-actuary-is-best-job-of-2013/?mod=e2fb

Gertrude Mary Cox

Gertrude Mary Cox, one of the pioneers of academic statistics departments in the United States and one of the first female statisticians. She has been dubbed the "First Lady of Statistics".
http://blogs.sas.com/content/jmp/2013/04/01/celebrating-statisticians-gertrude-cox/

How long is the average dissertation?

A major deterrent that keeps people away from graduate school is the requirement to write a dissertation or thesis. One often hears horror stories of the excessive page lengths that are expected. However, most don’t realize that dissertations are filled with lots of white space. The actual written portion may only account for less than 50% of the page length. Regardless, students tend to fixate on the ‘appropriate’ page length for a dissertation, as if it’s some sort of measure of how much work you’ve done to get your degree. Here is an interesting analysis on length of dissertations:

http://www.r-bloggers.com/how-long-is-the-average-dissertation/

MATLAB vs R

An interview with a forced convert from Matlab to R

http://www.r-bloggers.com/interview-with-a-forced-convert-from-matlab-to-r/

Happy Birthday Euler

Without question, Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) ranks among history's greatest mathematicians. Over six decades of unmatched productivity, and despite a visual impairment that grew ever worse, charted the course of mathematics throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. His reputation is captured in Laplace's famous admonition, "Read Euler, read Euler. He is the master of us all."

More Euler resources: 

V. S. Varadarajan writes about the many-sided genius in "Euler Through Time: A New Look at Old Themes" http://www.ams.org/bookstore-getitem/item=EULER

The MAA Euler Archive http://eulerarchive.maa.org/

Ed Sandifer's “How Euler Did It” column archive http://www.maa.org/news/howeulerdidit.html

Check out winners of MAA’s Euler Book Prize http://www.maa.org/awards/eulerbook.html

Read Loci: Convergence article “Euler Squares” by Elaine Young http://bit.ly/1179R4A

Euler books in the MAA Store http://bit.ly/10XAU3f 

Big Discoveries have Humble Beginnings

Lloyd Shapley and David Gale wrote a paper in American Mathematical Monthly which lead to an Economics Nobel, proving that big discoveries have humble beginnings.

http://digitaleditions.walsworthprintgroup.com/publication/?i=153092&p=5

Estimation of achievements from fame

Here is an article discussing estimation of achievements of Nobel Prize Laureates in economics, from their fame:

http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/4562151/Nobel-Prize-in-Economics-Laureates-achievements-estimated-from-their-fame.html