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Posts under ‘Science’

Super Crunchers – Ayres (2007) – 1/2

With the Triumph of Numbers, I read and wrote about the power of using numbers, and how the observation of empirical regularities led to the basic knowledge on how to use such numbers. Already in the triumph of numbers, it was indicated how valuable (numerical) data were regarded to be, for instance by the recollection [...]

The Triumph of Numbers – Cohen (2005)

My new job involves working with numbers. A lot. So, I started reading about using numbers, and I very much enjoyed ‘The Triumph of Numbers’ by I.B. Cohen (2005). This book gives an historical account not only of how numbers were used in different times, but also of ‘how counting shaped modern life’.
The books [...]

What I Learned

Last Tuesday, I posted the preface of my Master’s Thesis on my blog. In an earlier draft, I wrote some thoughts about what I learned during my education in Sociology. In the end, I decided to delete that passage, but I saved it for publication on my blog.
So, below some thougths on what I learned [...]

Finished Thesis, New Job

Just very recently I finished writing my Master’s Thesis, it was graded last week, and today I’m starting my new job as a PhD Candidate. I will be working at the department of Social Risk and Safety Studies, at the University of Twente. I will be working on a project regarding cross-country differences in the [...]

Newspaper interview: Rebecca Gomperts (Women on Waves)

Last weekend, the magazine of NRC Handelsblad (a major Dutch newspaper), featured an interview with Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Women on Waves. Women on Waves is “a Dutch non-profit organization concerned with women’s human rights. Its mission is to prevent unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortions throughout the world.” One of their activities that received [...]

New developments on abortion in the liberal Netherlands

Although the Netherlands are known for their liberal stance on induced abortion, currently the issue is debated again. Two only slightly related subjects now gain considerably attention in popular media and public opinion.
The first is a slight change in policy regarding the use of the ‘abortion pill’ in very early pregnancies (before 16 days [...]

Elective fertility cryo-preservation instigates debate in the Netherlands

New technology has that unique property of creating fascinating moral debates, which is especially so when it relates to new technology regarding life, death, or in this case: fertility. For a few years, technology has been available for the cryo-preservation of oocytes or ovarian tissue, which is used to help save the fertility of women [...]

Influence.ME: Simple Analysis

With the introduction of our new package for influential data influence.ME, I’m currently writing a manual for the package. This manual will address topics for both the experienced, and the inexperienced users.
I will also present much of the content of this manual on my blog. Of course, feel free to comment on it, and [...]

Presenting influence.ME at useR!

Today I presented influence.ME at the useR! conference in Rennes. Influence.ME is an R package for detecting influential data in mixed models. I developed this package together with Ben Pelzer and Manfred te Grotenhuis.
More information about influence.ME can be found on another section of my website.
Below, please find the slides of the presentation.
Presentation Influence.ME at [...]

Influence.ME: don’t specify the intercept

Just recently, I was contacted by a researcher who wanted to use influence.ME to obtain model estimates from which iteratively some data was deleted. In his case, observations were nested within an area, but there were very unequal numbers of observations in each area.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to use the influence.ME package on his models. [...]