Quantitude Greg Hancock & Patrick Curran

In this week's episode Patrick and Greg somehow manage to tie together pretending to be sick with game shows with zombies with conspiracy boards to explore the remarkable inter-relations among probability distributions, starting with the Bernoulli and biting their way through the binomial, z, t, chi-square, F, and beyond. Along the way they also discuss having a 122 degree temperature, playing with mercury, daytime TV, Paul Lynde, Vanna White, horses and plows, breeding like cats, the long co...

In this week's episode Greg and Patrick talk about both structural equation modeling and directed acyclic graphs, or DAGs, where they are similar and where they are different, and try to provide a Rosetta Stone for translating back and forth between the two. Along the way they also discuss pop, garage sales, thinking about excessive thought, roly-polies, potato bugs, been to the cinema, sweet tea, smiley face sub-i, poop hat, the British Museum, fiberglass replicas, love languages, cave drawi...

In this week's episode Patrick and Greg explore the incredibly cool topic of survival analysis, which is a set of techniques that allows for powerful tests of predictors of the amount of time to experiencing an event; yet these models are not often used in many areas of study. Along the way they also discuss the date of your death, running with scissors, Patrick's Audi A8, because she's dead, say my name, the good guys, things that annoy me, you tell me, using your brain, sofa forts, back dat...

In this week's episode, Greg and Patrick talk about the challenges of combining confirmatory factor analysis and multilevel data, and the underappreciated but absolutely critical role that theory plays in choosing the proper model for your constructs. Along the way they also discuss learning in a second language, torn meniscuseseses, concert C trumpets, nosy neighbors, forts of equations, artillery commanders, saluting cadets, the huffing closet, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Rock'em Sock'em Robots, ...

In this week's episode Greg and Patrick discuss the assessment of global vs. local model fit and they argue that although global measures of fit can be useful, carefully assessing local fit may be of much greater importance in practice. Along the way the also discuss cheap beach house rentals, misplaced sand dunes, Mrs. Lincoln, the child catcher, hushpuppies, cockroach feces, academia as community theater, spikes and smoodges, opening paragraphs, dark and stormy nights, sharp rusty knives, d...

In this week's episode Patrick and Greg provide an introduction to the Item Response Theory model: what it is, how it relates to traditional factor analysis, and how this modem approach improves upon some of the limitations of classical test theory. Along the way they also mention weinerness, memorizing Latin for punishment, eggszampke, in ether words, ITR, switching a and b, I’m not defensive - you are, why biostatisticians hate us (page 3 subsection 8), binary babble, EAPs and MAPs, c...