Lyx as an equation viewer

Lyx's new "view source" panel makes it an ideal WYSIWYG equation editor for LaTeX, just like MathType.

Fortran on Linux

Useful web site on this topic: http://www.fesb.hr/~psarajce/LinuxOS.html

SuperMix

A reincarnation of the old mixed-effect programs: http://www.ssicentral.com/supermix/index.html

Will be interesting to find out more about it, especially what it can do while others (Stata, aML, Mplus, etc.) cannot.

A major advantage of xpdf over acrobat

Using Acrobat pdf reader, I have to close the reader every time I re-compile my LaTeX source, which is tedious. This is not the case of xpdf. Xpdf works the same way as xdvi or yap: it automatically updates the pdf file.

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility

This journal also accept: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/706924/authorinstructions

Journal of Population Economics

Also allows LaTeX submission: http://www.springer.com/economics/population/journal/148?detailsPage=contentItemPage&CIPageCounter=512609

Scientific Commons

They did a good job tracking my work in progress: http://en.scientificcommons.org/shige_song

Simcol

This R package (http://simecol.r-forge.r-project.org/) looks interesting. For one thing: it can do Conway's game of life.

Getting Stata graphs into LaTeX

Under Linux, the easiest way would be to export Stata graphs to EPS format, then use the command line tool "epstopdf" to get them into PDF.

Interestingly, this procedure does not seem to work under Windows.

Another paper

I was informed that my paper "Does famine have a long-term effect on cohort mortality? Evidence from the 1959-1961 Great Leap Forward Famine in China" has been accepted for publication at Journal of Biosocial Science.

The working paper version can be found here: http://repositories.cdlib.org/ccpr/olwp/CCPR-043-07/

Writing posters using LaTeX

I have two posters to do for PAA 2009, and just found this article showing how to do posters using LaTeX: http://www.tug.org/pracjourn/2008-3/morales/morales.pdf

Start Cygwin with rxvt

http://blasphemousbits.wordpress.com/2007/02/12/rxvt-solves-many-cygwin-woes/

Bridging R and Python

Project RPy looks promising: http://rpy.sourceforge.net/rpy2/doc/html/index.html

LaTeX: turn off section numbering

Put this before the "\begin{document}": \setcounter{secnumdepth}{0} .

How is Microsoft with Vista like the Big Three automakers?

Interesting observation: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=330964

More LaTeX resources

1. http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/LaTeX_intro.html
2. http://tex.loria.fr/
   

COS

A Chinese web site dedicated to statistical technique: http://cos.name/

Xmind

Finally, an open-source cross-platform and easy-to-use mind mapping software: http://share.xmind.net/

Quantitative Data Analysis: Doing Social Research to Test Ideas

I am really glad to see Don's new book is out:
http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470380039.html
It is one of the best textbooks on the market that can help social science students and applied researchers to learn data analysis using Stata.

Ecological Models and Data in R

Good book: http://www.zoology.ufl.edu/bolker/emdbook/book.pdf

Stata and R graph examples

• Stata graph gallery: http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/library/GraphExamples/default.htm;
• R graph gallery: http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/allgraph.php
  

Demographic Research

Demographic Research (www.demographic-research.org) is the only population journal that takes LaTeX submission. I hope there will be more adopters soon.

How to write a book using LaTeX, R, and Sweave

http://book-by-sweave.wikidot.com/

Small is beautiful

I agree with the Economist on this: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12673233

Text summarizer

This looks interesting: http://libots.sourceforge.net/

MiKTeX for Linux

Will be interesting to check out when it matures a little: http://blog.miktex.org/post/2008/09/MiKTeX-28-Beta-1-for-GNULinux.aspx

Writing journal article using LaTeX

I have been intimated by the fact that many journals, especially in the filed of social science, accept only Word format submission. Writing in Word has been a terrible experience for me: error-prone, hard to automate, etc. But I have not been brave enough to go out and explore the possibility to mainly work on LaTeX and figure out ways to get the final draft into Word.

After some research, I think now I have all the tools that can handle all the important aspects of this process, and I am going to write my next paper - smoking in China - in LaTeX and see how it eventually turns out.

As a teacher, I will definitely teach students how to combine Linux, Emacs, LaTeX, Stata, estout, R, and sweave to automate the process of data analysis and results reporting. Maybe that will make a difference in the future.

Linux laptop

• http://system76.com/index.php
• http://laclinux.com/en/Laptop
• http://www.zareason.com/shop/home.php
• http://www.shoprcubed.com/

I especially like the System 76 (for its Ubuntu-specific feature) and Los Alamos (for its Thinkpad hardware, they even offer the new ultraportable X300!), and really wish that they could combine strength.

ESS (Emacs speaks statistics) has a new version out today

http://ess.r-project.org/

This is unbelivable

http://austinist.com/2008/12/10/aisd_teacher_throws_fit_over_studen.php

Open source and acedemia

Interesting materials:
http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/tayloriley/intro.html

Bash vs. Python

• http://ztatlock.blogspot.com/2008/11/bash-vs-python.html
• http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/02/07/python-for-bash-scripters-a-well-kept-secret/
  

Emacs as Python IDE

http://www.enigmacurry.com/2008/05/09/emacs-as-a-powerful-python-ide/

Linux and the Unix philosophy

A very good book. It should be one of the first readings any college student should do, in my opinion.

Here is part of the book made available by Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=ZSagwFkxfWMC&dq=linux+and+the+unix+philosophy&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=0YZJwBXlhY&sig=Q2lS05PW1F7fQLEVBAmdwCs9Jwo&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result

OpenOffice 3 on Ubuntu

The broken Ubuntu repository for OO3 has been fixed. Now it is possible to follow the instruction to upgrade from OO 2.4 to OO 3: http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-To-Install-OpenOffice-org-3-0-in-Ubuntu-8-10-96449.shtml

Here is an interesting review of different open source office suites: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212201932

Creating R packages

Here are some detailed instructions:

http://www.maths.bris.ac.uk/~maman/computerstuff/Rhelp/Rpackages.html

NIH proposal in LaTeX

I never would think NIH proposal can be done in LaTeX: http://www.cs.duke.edu/brd/NIH/tips/

Another truly amzing LaTeX resource: http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/latex.html

How to write a LaTeX package: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=writecls

Automatic table making using R

R provides several facilities to automate the table making process. The XTABLE package can produce summary tables and tables for single model results. HMISC and DESIGN have some facilities to get the results into LaTeX (I have not tried them); MEMISC can produce multiple model result table; and this tiny package, APSRTABLE, seems to provide quavalent functionality and more flexible.

Here is another approach and some examples: http://www.r-cookbook.com/node/11

Using g++ with numerical recipes

Some instructions: http://linux4research.blogspot.com/2006/11/use-g-and-numerical-recipes.html

Here is another interesting post: http://mingus.as.arizona.edu/~bjw/software/boycottnr.html

Ubuntu vs. OSX

1. How to install Ubuntu on a Macbook: http://regebro.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/installing-linux-on-a-macbook-without-os-x/
2. Ubuntu vs. OSX: http://regebro.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/os-x-vs-ubuntu-ubuntu-ftw/?referer=sphere_related_content/

Now I realize that these two posts were from the same person: http://regebro.wordpress.com.

Two more papers of mine

• http://repositories.cdlib.org/ccpr/olwp/CCPR-012-08

• http://repositories.cdlib.org/ccpr/olwp/CCPR-013-08

Netbeans and gfortran

I know that Eclipse has a good FORTRAN ide called Photran. I also know that Sun has a compote FORTRAN development tool chains called Sun Studio. What I did not know is that Netbeans itself is a good IDE for gfortran, the default FORTRAN compiler for most Linux distros today.

Here is a really simple debugging session.

Python 3

Python 3 has been released: http://www.python.org. It will be interesting how well it is received by the majority of Python programmer.

Automatic table making using Stata

Definitive guidelines:

1. http://repec.org/bocode/e/estout/
2. http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s456977.html
   

LaTeX to other format

Here is a solution: http://pastcounts.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/converting-latex-to-openoffice/

Here is another one: http://nileshbansal.blogspot.com/2007/12/latex-to-openofficeword.html

And this one: http://latex2rtf.sourceforge.net/

A summary: http://www.tug.org/utilities/texconv/textopc.html

For equations: http://latexinword.sourceforge.net/