NOT BASEBALL

A session on the use of spreadsheets in QR classes had a little too much preamble for a 30 minute session. I’m attending an expanded session tomorrow and will link to the proceedings with the “super spreadsheet.” I couldn’t find the proceedings in a quick Google search.

There were some good ideas though. None work for my upcoming stat project perfectly. Some I had seen before:

• Should I buy a Prius, or Focus? What factors impact,or could change the decision?
• Look at mortality rates by age group- not cohort- current age in a year. Norm it so that all have the same starting value so you can see declines. Notice that you can see AIDS with the 25-44 group in the late 1980’s- the general slow, overall decline is disappears. (You need to renorm because the 80+ group dies at such a high rate that all the other age groups are smooshed together.)
• You can look at birth rates per 1000  for different age groups. Comparing perecents of births in age group and percent of total births by age group is interesting since only one is appropriately a pie chart.