-
Sense-checking data
Over the birdsite dumpster fire. Emily Harvey was asking: do you know of any good guidelines/advice for what one should do to sense check and make sure they understand any data before using it? I replied the following: Typically, I might be very familiar with the type of data and its variables (if it is…
-
Being data curious: the strange case of lamb consumption in NZ
There is a lot of talk about the skills needed for working in Statistics/Data Science, with the discussion often focusing on theoretical understanding, programming languages, exploratory data analysis, and visualization. There are many good blog posts dealing with how you get data, process it with your favorite language and then creating some good-looking plots. However,…
-
Comment on Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest
After writing a blog post about the paper “Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest” I decided to submit a formal comment to the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability in July 2013, which was published today. As far as I know, Heinemann et al. provided a rebuttal to my comments, which…
-
My take on the USA versus Western Europe comparison of GM corn
A few days ago I came across Jack Heinemann and collaborators’ article (Sustainability and innovation in staple crop production in the US Midwest, Open Access) comparing the agricultural sectors of USA and Western Europe‡. While the article is titled around the word sustainability, the main comparison stems from the use of Genetically Modified crops in…
-
GM-fed pigs, chance and how research works
Following my post on GM-fed pigs I received several comments, mostly through Twitter. Some people liked having access to an alternative analysis, while others replied with typical anti-GM slogans, completely ignoring that I was posting about the technical side of the paper. This post is not for the slogan crowd (who clearly are not interested…