PersonalBrain

Another cool toy.

Making footnote double-spaced, in LaTeX

Here is a solution: \footnote{\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{2}\selectfont blablabla}.

Causual inference et al.

Here is a list of interesting resources:

1. http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/stat/bias.html
2. http://www.mata.co.uk/meeting/6nasug/causal.pdf
3. http://www.stata.com/meeting/5nasug/wiv.pdf
4. http://pped.org/stata/ciwod.pdf
5. ...
   

KDE 4 is counterintuitive

I installed the KDE 4 components on my Ubuntu box and took a good look at it. I was disappointed because, compared to KDE 3, the new version makes some routine operations more difficult. I have to uninstall it after one day and got back to the old Gnome interface. I don't think I will try it any time soon, unless there are some significant changes.

Some references on gender preference and gender selection

1. http://homepages.gac.edu/~arosenth/285/Abrevaya_Missing_Girls_in_the_US.pdf
2. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PvEC5g3dPKoC&oi=fnd&pg=RA3-PT57&dq=evidence+sex+selective+abortion+china&ots=I2H6gvAd9W&sig=RmPaCu_LQrjIEe2Sld_AWMmAlZU#PRA3-PT59,M1
3. ...
   

Linux notebook again

OK, looks like Lenovo is working toward this direction (http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4205), even though SuSE is not my favorite distro, and T is not as cool as X, but it is a significant step forward.

Will there ever be high-end Linux laptops?

As a happy Linux user, I am glad to see a sudden increase in the number of computers on the market with Linux pre-installed. However, most of these machines are low-cost and low-power ones, while the high-end machines are still dominated by XP or Vista, usually loaded with tons of trial wares. Will there ever be a good computer like Sony SZ, Thinkpad T or X, or Fujitsu Lifebook Q, with Ubuntu pre-installed on the market? Am I the only person who is interested in seeing such a machine?

Some reference on Sweave, R, and literate programming

1. http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1148&context=jhubiostat
2. http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/workflow-apps.pdf
3. http://epub.wu-wien.ac.at/dyn/virlib/wp/eng/mediate/epub-wu-01_c75.pdf?ID=epub-wu-01_c75
4. To be continued...
   

Zotero 1.02

Zotero 1.02 is out. It fixes some bugs and adds more styles. Very cool.

Journal of statistical software

Journal of statistical software to R is very much like Stata journal to Stata, and it is free: http://www.jstatsoft.org/

Handling large data set using R

It seems to be a problem with R to handle really large data set. Here is an interesting discussion: http://yusung.blogspot.com/2007/09/dealing-with-large-data-set-in-r.html

And two packages: "ff" and "filehash". Need to check them out.

PMG: poor man's GUI

PMG seems to play nicely with ESS. That way, I can rely on Emacs+ESS for program editing and executing, while use PMG to look at the data structure. Seems to be a productive combination.

Rcmdr, another nice GUI for R, can do the same thing.

I just discovered that PMG is not very stable and tends to crash if large data is loaded. Rcmdr seems to be more stable. Unfortunately, JGR does not seem to play with ESS nicely.

Using R for my next project

I decide to use R for my next research project. I have been learning and playing with R for a long time, but when dealing with "mission critical" situation, I always came back to Stata.

As the R platform has become more mature, especially with the addition of some nice packages, I think the time to switch has come.