The organizing committee of the useR! 2009 conference just informed me, that my submission for presenting my extension package influence.ME, has been accepted! Influence.ME is a new R package that I’m currently developing, with the indispensable help of Ben Pelzer and Manfred te Grotenhuis. Although I did not yet introduce influence.ME on this blog, rest assured that I will do so within just a few weeks. Now is time for celebration!

Influence.ME is an R package that provides a collection of tools for detecting influential data in mixed effects models. Testing for influence with mixed effects models is especially important in Social Science applications, for two reasons. First, models in the Social Sciences are frequently based on large numbers of individuals while the number of higher level units is often relatively small. Secondly, often the higher level units are remarkably similar, for instance in the case of neighboring countries.

useR! is a yearly user conference on exciting applications in R. The useR! 2009 edition will be held in Rennes, France. A great variety of packages, applications, and other developments relating to R will be discussed. I’ve visited the useR! 2008 conference last year (in Dortmund, Germany), and found it a highly stimulating environment for those interested in exciting, practical applications in statistics using R.

Influence.ME is a project I’ve been working on for the last months, together with Ben Pelzer and Manfred te Grotenhuis. I’m still working – quite hard!- to iron out the last quirks, and we have tons of ideas for extending its functionality. I’m very happy to be able to present the result of this work to an R-minded audience this summer.