POLS707 info

[Paul Johnson <>]

In case the pols 707 email list is not working for everybody, I'm 
sending this message individually to all of the people in the class 
roster as well as to the list.  If you don't get 2 messages, it means 
you are not signed up  properly.

News of note:

1. Last week some of you pointed out a typo to me in the R assignment 
that I announced to this email list last week. That has been corrected.

In case you did not get that assignment, I suggest you go look in the 
online archive for the ps707-l list, which you can access from my ps707 
web page. And fix your email list subscription.

2. Although there was no class last Monday, I still expect everybody is 
working to learn R and make the computer do the right things. If you 
spent 10 hours last week and invest 10  hours this week, you should be 
proficient in input/output. By this time, it should becoming easy & 
direct for you to start Emacs, open a file of commands, run it through 
R, save results in text and/or a graphic format.

If you did not get to that point yet, I urge you to invest your time 
wisely in developing these fundamental skills.

I will for sure be in the lab Tuesday at 3:30-5:30.  On Friday, there is 
a brief meeting scheduled for the public policy prelim, so I will not be 
in the lab at 3:30. I may get there by 4:15 or so and will remain until 5.


3. Next monday, I plan to address many topics, one of which is the idea 
of a statistical distribution. You probably already know about the 
Normal, but there are plenty more, many of which are listed in the 
reading materials on the syllabus, some of which are not.

 In that regard, I learned about a new one today while reading the 
r-help email list.  The "skew normal" distro is pretty neat, and you can 
follow up on it here

http://tango.stat.unipd.it/SN/Intro/intro.html

and there's an R package for it, which I've not tried yet. I don't know 
if the package is in CRAN yet, but you can get it directly from the 
authors and build it if it is not.

http://tango.stat.unipd.it/SN/

I'll make sure the lab pcs have that package installed, whether it is in 
CRAN or not.

pj

--
Paul E. Johnson                       email: pauljohn_AT_ku.edu
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn
1541 Lilac Lane, Rm 504
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66044-3177           FAX: (785) 864-5700