R programming books

• A Little Book of R for Multivariate Analysis pdf
• A Little Book of R for Biomedical Statistics pdf
  
• A Little Book of R for Time Series pdf
  

Three free books on R for Statistics

Avril Coghlan, a lecturer at University College Cork in Ireland, has written and made available for free three books ideal for students or practitioners new to R who want to use it for multivariate analysis, time series analysis or biomedical statistics. Each book begins with practical advice for installing and using R in general, before diving into their specialized topics:

* A Little Book of R for Multivariate Analysis (pdf, 49 pages) is a simple introduction to multivariate analysis using the R statistics software. It covers topics such as reading and plotting multivariate data, principal components analysis, and linear discriminant analysis.
* A Little Book of R for Biomedical Statistics (pdf, 33 pages) is a simple introduction to biomedical statistics using the R statistics software, with sections on relative risks and odds ratios, dose-response analysis, clinical trial design and meta-analysis.
* A Little Book of R for Time Series (pdf, 71 pages) is a simple introduction to time series analysis using the R statistics software (have you spotted the pattern yet?). It includes instruction on how to read and plot time series, time series decomposition, forecasting, and ARIMA models.

All three books are free to use, share and remix under a Creative Commons license, and are available from Dr Coghlan's home page linked below.

Dr Avril Coghlan: avrilomics

History of computers link

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/06/science/20111206-technology-timeline.html

Sent to me by Kaustubh Patil. Nice timeline of computer science, with popup facts.

Brian Eno biography

A Brian Eno biography from the BBC. What a life!

He created modern music. The Bowie Berlin trilogy. The Talking Heads, U2. Coldplay. And still pushing the frontier.

http://www.archive.org/details/BrianEno-HitsClassicsAndTracks

New favorite food

It's people food!

History of International Currencies Christopher Weber

C. Weber writes an investment newsletter, lives in Monaco so apparently makes a good living off of it. I got ahold of a pdf called Historyofmoneycompleter.pdf. The following are my notes on his opinions. When I think it important enough to disagree, I will do so in italics.

The Mayans were in their golden age from 250-800 AD, the Dark Ages in Europe. We do not know what they used for money.

World currencies can utterly lose value, and fairly rapidly. The idea of the dollar losing its reserve currency status was laughable 3 years ago.

Money must

1. have accepted value
   
2. be durable
   
3. bedivisible
   
4. consistent quality (even after division)
   
5. convenient
   

The standard has almost always been either gold or silver. Paper money is only valuable when people trust the issuer. Greeks made the first international currency, the silver Athenian Drachma. Its weight and quality stayed at 67 grains of fine silver (480 grains == 1 troy ounce) from Solon of Athens (600 BC) to Alexander the Great (circa 300 BC), falling to 65 grains as Greece declined and was absorbed by Rome. The Roman Denarius was an exact copy (in size and weight) of the Drachma. It declined only modestly for 250 years, declining to 60 grains at the time of Julius Ceaser. But the Roman economy pushed first the poor and then the middle class into debt. Nero began debasing the currency in 54 AD. The final straw came in 193, under Septimus Serverus, who reduced the denarius to 26 grains of silver. At this point, the coin was no longer accepted as currency in the outside world. The flow of imports (Inda, China) stopped. Trade, economy, and living standards went into a tailspin. One historian, writing in 1934, described it thus:

a condition of depression and despair to which the modern world ... can present no parallel ... Everywhere land was falling to waste untilled, empty, gaunt, the water courses dried and the poplar sere and yellow ... the slaves running away and revolting, the hired managers ... hastening to line their pockets ... and the patrician owners hiding their gold and silver and jewelry against the day of inevitable collapse

We should also here note the role of disease, which drastically reduced populations. Horrid times indeed.
The fall of Rome lead to the rise of Byzantium. Along with many other things, Constantine introduced the gold Solidus, 65 grains. The idea of stable currency (which had not existed for some 500 years) remained alive. He also saw that debt had ruined the Romans, so outlawed interest. This coin lasted over 750 years.

Next in line was the Islamic Dinar, again at 65 grains of gold. It lasted 450 years.

Islamic world domination ended when they introduced paper money.

science rap

Baba Brinkman

Profiled in Wired for pioneering "science rap." Rap 'songs' which teach i.e. evolution, designed for classroom use ?? WTF-- this goes so far beyond un-cool. If you want to be a cool science teacher, blow things up, don't play bad music vids from a music form whose cred is as old as you.

Then I started thinking. It can't be worse than 'christian rock'. So why not 'science rock' or whatever?

Late Pleistocene Dispersal of Modern Humans in the Americas

By Ted Goebel, Science, 14 March 2008

A similar article featured on a recent podcast. Don't want to look it up right now.

Goebel writes that
The human skeletal evidence across the Americas shows that the NEw World was populated by Homo Sapiens. Although the crania of htese early people look different from modern Native Americans, modern and ancient DNA studies show that they were genetically related. The earliest inhabitants of hte Americas hailed form south Siberia (Between the Altai Mountains and Amur Valley).

Current molecular evidence implies that members of a single population (of less than 5000 individuals) left Siberia and headed east to the Americas approximately 16.6 ka.

Humans colonized the Americas around 15 ka, immediately after deglaciation o fthe Pacific coastal corridor. The first Americans used boats, and the coastal corridor would have been the likely route of passage since the interior corridor appears to have remained closed for at least another 1000 years.