The American Statistician Highlights
May 2008: Much Ado About ‘How-To’
Peter Westfall, The American Statistician Editor
I
n May 2008, The Americanan
Statistician (TAS) has a decidedlyly
“how-to” theme, starting with aa
special section containing two tutorials. s.
We all know data mining is more pop--
ular than ever, and our first paper by
Mu Zhu provides an excellent TAS-
style tutorial, “Kernels and Ensembles:
Books ReviewB ed
Perspectives on Statistical Learning.”
He explains the classic and latest
FFuundamental Probability: A Computational
methods, with commentary, discus-
Appproach by Marc S. Paolella
sion, and practical recommendations.
Another tutorial presentation, with
Graphics of Lara ge Datasets: Visualizing a
discussion and critique, is given by
MiMillion by Antony Unwin, Martin Theus,
David Freedman in his paper
aand Heiknd e Hofmann
“Survival Analysis: A Primer.”
The Statistical Practice sec-
InIntuitivtu e Probability and Random Processes
tion shows how-to in “Choosing
UsUsing MAin TLAB® by Steven Kay
a Coverage Probability for
Prediction Intervals” by Joshua
Leearning SAS bar y Example: A Programmer’s
Landon and Nozer D. Singpurwallalaa and “Uand “Using Calibrationsing Calibration
GuidGuide by Ron Cody
To Improve Rounding in Imputation” by Recai M. Yucel, Yulei
He, and Alan M. Zaslavsky. Ever wondered how to talk to
Pharmaceutical Statistics Using SAS: A Practical Guide
the press? Len Stefanski provides information in “The North
by Alex Dmitrienko, Christy Chuang-Stein, Ralph
Carolina Lottery Coincidence.”
D’agostino (eds.)
This issue’s Teachers’ Corner provides a variety of how-to.
Wondering how to get students interested in maximum likelihood
A Quick Course in Statistical Process Control by
for censored data? Perhaps the paper “Is the Overtime Period in an
Mick Norton
NHL Game Long Enough?” by Jack Brimberg and W. J. Hurley
will do the trick. Thinking about requiring students to use laptops
An Introduction to Statistical Analysis for Business and
in the classroom? Richard C. Bell and Andrew G. Glen show how
Industry by Michael Stuart
to do it in “Experiences Teaching Probability and Statistics with
Personal Laptops in the Classroom.” The paper “Helping Students
Statistics: Informed Decisions Using Data by Michael
To Build Conceptual Understanding of Elementary Statistics”
Sullivan III
by Nick Broers shows how to foster deeper learning of concepts
among elementary students. Finishing the section is “Improved Variations on Split Plot and Split Block Experiment
Approximation of the Binomial Distribution by the Skew-Normal
Designs by Walter T. Federer and Freedom King
Distribution” by Ching-Hui Chang, Jyh-Jiuan Lin, Nabendu
Pal, and Miao-Chen Chiang, which shows how to use the skew- Handbook of Parametric and Nonparametric
normal distribution.
Statistical Procedures (4th ed.) by David J. Sheskin
The General section deviates somewhat from the how-to theme,
but contains a wonderful collection of intriguing statistical and proba- An Introduction to the Mathematics of Money: Saving
bilistic results. It starts with “A Surprising MLE for Interval-Censored
and Investing by David Lovelock, Marilou Mendel,
Binomial Data” by Jesse Frey and Osvaldo Marrero, followed by
and A. Larry Wright
“On the Simple Symmetric Random Walk and Its Maximal Function”
by José Palacios. Gauri S. Datta and Sanat K. Sarkar present “ Statistics for Business and Economics (10th ed.) by
A General Proof of Some Known Results of Independence Between
David R. Anderson, Dennis J. Sweeney, and Thomas
Two Statistics,” and Robin Willink gives “A Unique Property of the
A. William
Normal Distribution Associated with Perturbing a General Random
Variable.” The how-to theme returns with Georgios Skoulakis’
paper on how to use “A Recursive Formula for Computing
Central Moments of a Multivariate Lognormal Distribution” for
portfolio optimization. ■
MAY 2008 AMSTAT NEWS 23
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