1. We're on the "home ¡­

1. We're on the "home stretch" of the course, and Mon 11 May I'll round off the material on "the Quiet Scandal of Statistics", from Ch 7.

2. Exercises to go through:

D: Consider the model F(y) = 1 - [1 - Phi((y - xi)/sigma)]^gamma for a cumulative distribution, where gamma = 1 corresponds to the classic normal. Compute the 3 x 3 Jwide matrix at the null model, and find the tolerance radius around the normal model.

E: Find the "birds on islands" data set from the book's web page, and let y = number of bird species, x = distance from Ecuador (in km), z1 = area [in thousands of sq km], z2 = elevation [in thousands of m], z3 = distance to nearest island [in km]. Consider the eight Poisson regression models for y in terms of keeping x protected and z1, z2, z3 open covariates. (a) Construct a table with AIC and BIC values, and comment. (b) Carry out FIC analysis for mu = E(Y|x0) for xlow = 100 and xhigh = 1300, with z1, z2, z3 kept at their average values. (c) Carry out AFIC, averaged across say 100 x values spread from xlow to xhigh, and weighted according to weigh function proportional to x. The focus is still mu = E(Y|x), again with z1, z2, z3 kept at their average values.

3. I have uploaded com15b, which does tolerance ellipse and tolerace strips for the expoweibullgamma model of Exercises 7 and 10.