Hi, everyone,

We're going to be testing out a lot of things over the weekend as part of our redesign process.  Please don't be surprised.

Admin

Hi, everyone,

Well, it's inauguration time, so we're all going to be taking this week off. Posting will be sporadic, as we'll all be traveling to DC, attending balls, cocktail parties, etc

Admin

The kind of people who are into data, technology and open-source tend to have strong opinions. The sort of people who read about these things also tend to.  Talking to Dirty D, I frequently hear that most of the people who read his posts don't bother leaving comments because they excoriate him on  IM and by email for his opinions.  These are subjects that bring up strong intellectual passions and a lot of emotional investment.

Sometimes we say things about products, methods or vendors.  It's going to happen on a blog.  I can't say that I'll defend every statement that we'll ever make on this site, but I will say that I'll defend everything we've said to date. How to be fair to the people whose products and services we slam? Or just discuss?

I had a lot to think about with respect to this when an official represenative from SAS decided to come by here and engage us in debate. Pluribus had a post about The New York Times' reporting on R (which is quickly becoming the preferred tech around here, but Dirty D still swears by SPSS.) and made a few cracks about SAS, which, really, while flip, weren't unjustified.   We were honored to have Steve come by and engage us in the comments.

I believe that that kind of good faith commitment to discussion and debate should be rewarded and encouraged, and that is why we are introducing a new feature to this site: Right of Response. Any vendor or group who feels disparaged by what we write here is free to have us post a rebuttal from them and allow them to engage our readers in debate.  Steve, if you're still with us, email me and I'll temporarily bump your privileges to allow you to post SAS's views.

Admin

When will they have 2008 on the file? With any luck, early in 2009!

Happy New Year from the guys and girls of Overdetermined!

Admin

Hey, everyone,

Our great Christmas present to everyone is the week off. Relax, drink some egg nog, fight with your families and try not to think too hard about voter files, polling, statistics and data.

Admin

Hi, everyone.

Dirty D has emailed to let me know that due to family related travel, he is going to be thirty-six to forty-eight hours delayed in posting his update to his ongoing series, Building a Poll. He is currently in East Asia, where he is removed from us by several, several time zones.

Ah, the life of a blogger.

Admin

Hi, everyone,

We're going through a few changes here at Overdetermined.  HummuSoft's series, Cool Tools, will be moving to Tuesday morning, and Pluribus's new series, An Introduction to R, will be appearing on Thursday morning.

Texas Toast will soon be contributing a series on implementing all of these ideas in the field, and translating all these models into plans for knocking on doors, making phone calls, etc. Exciting stuff!

I'm looking forward to all of this, and I hope that you will find these changes as interesting as we do.

Admin

Hi, everyone. I know that you were expecting a post in the Building A Poll series, but I managed to somehow lose my entire post. I'll have to start from scratch and repost over the weekend.

Sorry to disappoint.

DD

Hi, everyone. I'd like to take a second to introduce you to our new contributor, Pluribus.  We are pretty lucky to get a guy with his experience and talents. He's worked as a data consultant for state governments and NGO's, he's done pretty interesting programming stuff, and he's going to be writing a pretty kickass series on programming some of the various things that we discuss on here using an open sourced statistics environment called R.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what kinds of tools he can bring to the environment.

Admin

Sorry, guys, those of you looking for us to give you everything you wanted to know about this election were a bit disappointed over the last few days. We've all been doing GOTV work.

By the way, OBAMA!

We'll be back tomorrow.