Childhood obesity

It has been fun to work on the childhood obesity stuff again! We'll see how the grant goes.

Models for Discrete Longitudinal Data

Free e-book: http://www.springerlink.com/content/w2016h/?sortorder=asc&p_o=0

Another bayesian book

Spiegelhalter, D., Best, N., Lunn, D. and Thomas, A. (2009) Bayesian Analysis using the BUGS language: A Practical Introduction, Chapman and Hall

Also, the online materials for "Bayesian Modeling Using WinBUGS" books keeps expanding: http://stat-athens.aueb.gr/~jbn/winbugs_book/

Reading and writing data using Python

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-python8/?ca=dgr-lnxw16DicoverPythonP8

Why do we focus on individuals?

Here is the answer offered by Kenny et al. (2006):

"...First, no doubt much of the attention given to the individual is cultural. The United States is the most individualistic country in the world (Smith & Bond, 1994), and because the United States has dominated social and behavioral research, the prevalence of research concerning individuals is hardly surprising.

A second factor that has contributed to this individualistic orientation is the reliance on standard statistical methods such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple regression...

The third reason is that psychologists have dominated research in the social and behavioral sciences ..."

Very interesting book:

Kenny, D. A., D. A. Kashy, and W. L. Cook. 2006. Dyadic data analysis. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.