Three-Toed Sloth

Introduction to Statistical Computing

At an intersection of Enigmas of Chance and Corrupting the Young.

Class homepage

Fall 2012

Class announcement Lectures with no links haven't been delivered yet, and the order an topics may change.

Lectures:
1. Introduction to the class, basic data types, basic data structures
2. More data structures: matrices, data frames, structures of structures
3. Flow Control, Looping, Vectorization
4. Writing and Calling Functions
5. Writing Multiple Functions
6. Top-Down Design
7. Testing
8. Debugging
9. The Scope of Names
10. Functions as Objects
11. Split/Apply/Combine I: Using Basic R
12. Split/Apply/Combine II: Using plyr
13. Abstraction and Refactoring
14. Graphics (canceled)
15. Simulation I: Random variable generation
16. Simulation II: Monte Carlo, Markov chains, Markov chain Monte Carlo
17. Optimization I: Deterministic, Unconstrained Optimization
18. Optimization II: Stochastic, Constrained, and Penalized Optimization
19. Basic Text Manipulation
20. Regular Expressions I
21. Regular Expressions II
22. Importing Data from Web Pages
23. Reshaping Data
24. Relational Databases I
25. Relational Databases II

Labs:
1. Basic Probability, Basic Data Structures
2. Flow Control and the Urban Economy
3. Of Big- and Small- Hearted Cats
4. Like a Jackknife to the Heart
5. Testing Our Way to Outliers
6. I Can Has Likelihood Surface?
7. Bunches of Novels, or, Representation and the History of Genre
8. How Antibiotics Came to Peoria
9. A Maze of Twisty Little Passages

Homework:
1. Rainfall, Data Structures, Obsessive Doodling
2. Tweaking Resource-Allocation-by-Tweaking
3. Hitting Bottom and Calling for a Shovel
4. Standard Errors of the Cat Heart
5. Dimensions of Anomaly
6. I Made You a Likelihood Function, But I Ate It
7. canceled
8. The Intensity of 19th Century Literature
9. Antibiotic Diffusion and Outlier Resistance
10. Several Hundred Degrees of Separation

Exams:
1. Midterm Exam
2. Final Project Options

Fall 2011

Class announcement

Lectures:
1. Introduction to the class, basic data types, basic data structures
2. More Data Structures: Matrices, Lists, Data Frames, Structures of Structures
3. Flow Control, Looping, Vectorization
4. Writing and Calling Functions
5. Writing Multiple Functions
6. Top-Down Design
7. The Scope of Names
8. Debugging
9. Testing
10. Functions as Arguments
11. Functions as Return Values
12. Exam briefing
13. Split, Apply, Combine: Using Base R
14. Split, Apply, Combine: Using plyr
15. Abstraction and Refactoring
16. Simulation I: Random Variable Generation
17. Exam debriefing
18. Simulation II: Monte Carlo and Markov Chains
19. Simulation III: Mixing and Markov Chain Monte Carlo
20. Basic Character Manipulation
21. Regular Expressions I
22. Regular Expressions II
23. Importing Data from Webpages I
24. Importing Data from Webpages II
25. Databases I
26. Databases II

Homework:
1. Rainfall and Data Structures
2. Tweaking Resource-Allocation-by-Tweaking
3. Improving Estimation by Nonlinear Least Squares
4. Standard Errors of the Cat Heart
5. Rancorous Testing
6. Outlier-Robust Linear Regression
7. 'Tis the Season to Be Unemployed
8. Sampling Accidents
9. Get (the 400) Rich(est list) Quick
10. Baseball Salaries

Labs:
1. Basic Probability and Basic Data Structures
2. Flow Control and the Urban Economy
3. Of Big- and Small- Hearted Cats
4. Further Errors of the Cat Heart
5. Testing Our Way to Outliers
6. Likelihood
7. Split-Apply-Combine
8. Changing My Shape, I Feel Like an Accident
9. Regular Expressions I

Exams:
1. Midterm
2. Final Project Descriptions

My Work Here Is Done

Self-Evaluation and Lessons Learned