this week i

published the r code to analyze my first and favorite - the medical expenditure panel survey.

believe: the math will set you free.  oh and might get you out of traffic.

watched hitchcock's vertigo.  as captivating as movies made in 1958 get.

call this one, "how about a little milk with your honey?"

okay. so. people who talk shit about america: you're not for real. i mean seriously. seriously? do you like airplanes? we did that. oh what's that flag on the moon? america's. um we invented the internet. the in.ter.net. this isn't two tin cans and a piece of string here, it's humanity's greatest accomplishment of the times thanks. sorry? you read some statistics that americans live two fewer years than norwegians or americans aren't as good at math as estonians? oh cool and what year are those numbers from? what's that? you found a source from 2009? oh really? because i am pretty sure that ten generations of tired, poor, huddled masses just spent four hundred years leaving everything they'd ever known, crossing a treacherous ocean, landing in a brand new world where they didn't speak the language, intent on building a society that would become everyone else's ideal of what's possible. but thirteen year old estonians tested better at trigonometry so you think we should raise a white flag? fascinating. you might wanna reconsider the weight you give to nations of immigrants. uhhh, yes, we've made some mistakes. andrew jackson doesn't belong on the twenty, we shouldn't have dropped the bomb on nagasaki, our confederates were backward hooligans - but give us a little credit, we went to war to end that evil. so have you ever been to new york? humanity's greatest city. while you're there, try discriminating our rich from our poor - hmmmmm not as easy as you thought, is it? you should come visit utah or california or louisiana sometime, we would love to have you. hey did you know that our president's name is barack hussein obama? do you see new zealanders electing a maori or indians voting for a dalit or germans choosing a turkish chancellor? not in your lifetime? oh yeah, ya know why? because americans are the future, and we're not handing over the keys.


read through dr. lumley's lecture notes from his presentation at the 2011 joint statistical meeting.

# nicely formatted svyby results
ftable( svyby( ~var1 , ~byvar , design , svymean ) )

# complex raking for the employer health benefits survey
rake(
        dclus1 ,
        sample =
            list(
                ~stype+sch.wide ,
                ~stype+comp.imp
            ) ,
        population =
            list(
                pop.table ,
                pop.table2
            )
    )

# weight trimming for the employer health benefits survey
calibrate(
    dclus1 ,
    ~stype + api99 ,
    c( pop.totals , api99 = 3914069 ) ,
    bounds = c(0.5,2) ,
    trim = c( 2/3 , 3/2 )
)
37 weights were trimmed


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