Planimeter's Blog

Significance levels in TEX directly from R (via Sweave technique)

planimeter — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:00:37 +0000

If you are familiar with the technique combining R statistical and graphical capacities with the flexibility of TEX than you might be interested in putting the significance levels directly from the R-output into your TEX documentation.

Let’s see the sentence:

It turned out that gender is a significant factor (p = 0.0023).

Let’s also suppose that you had to use a linear model in R to provide the statistical test.
Than you might have a line in R something like this: lm(a$DEPENDENT ~ 1).
You can directly insert the p-value from the R-output with application the following code snippet (all written in TEX, but running with application of sweave):

<<echo=false, results = hide>>=
si1 <- summary(lm(a$DEPENDENT~1))$coefficients[4] names(si1) <- NULL @

It turned out that gender is a significant factor (p = \Sexpr{round(si, 3)}.

It produces the sentence mentioned in the introduction, because

summary(lm(a$DEPENDENT~1))$coefficients[4]

provides the p-value of the linear model.

Recoding in R

planimeter — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:36:35 +0000

Would you like to recode your variable elegantly?
Why do not you use recode library in CAR package?
An example from its help:

The link ( cran.r-project.org/web/packages/car/index.html ) to download.

Remove write protection from USB memory stick

planimeter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:22:23 +0000

I somehow lost the partition table on my USB memory stick while I was in a project to do it a bootable tool.
I thought that it will not be a problem, because the memory stick was identified by my PC (with MS XP).
Unfortunately it turned out that its format became RAW and I could not find ways to format it as FAT, FAT32 or NTFS.

The suggested solutions (simply application of Windows’s Disk Manager, or the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool ( http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197 ) could not solve my problem.

Finally I found NirSoft’s free USBDeview v1.40 ( http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html ) software, which made possible the formatting of my almost thrown-away USB memory stick.

Just simply choose the raw formatted USB memory stick and you can reformat it

You can you use this tool very simply: just choose the raw formatted USB memory stick and you will be able to reformat is.
Good luck !

WriteMaps

planimeter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:06:00 +0000

WriteMap ( writemaps) was introduced (for me) by .NET Issue 193. This is a relly useful (and free) tool to sketch the design (topology) of a new website. It has a marvellous outlook and can be a basics for discussion with your client or with the members of your team (as it provides the possibility of commenting each page seperately).
Anyhow I have problems with even starting the work underOpera 9.64.

Blog start

planimeter — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:06:42 +0000

A new blog is started. God knows its number in the row. Anyhow, I hope that it can deliver solution(s) for my readers.
Who I am? I’m originally a statistician. But I’ve recently been facing with web-based problems, tools and solutions. As I realised that only the prompt answers are adequate even in statistical services, I started to deal with on-line, web-based and one more characteristics, automated reporting.
What did I find? A huge jungle, without specific solutions, where even the directions are questionable sometimes.
I would like to introduce my efforts and solutions in this heroic struggle. The struggle with the statistical tools, like R, SAS, WINBUGS, WEKA, etc., the struggle with web-based environment like PHP, SQL, MYSQL, the struggle with the different CMS’s like WordPress, Textpattern, Typo3 and some connected topics like photo-editing and publishing, archiving, providing and improving security and so on.