Sunday Data/Statistics Link Roundup (10/21/12)

1. This is scientific variant on the #whatshouldwecallme meme isn’t exclusive to statistics, but it is hilarious. 
2. This is a really interesting post that is a follow-up to the XKCD password security comic. The thing I find most interesting about this is that researchers realized the key problem with passwords was that we were looking at them purely from a computer science perspective. But _people _use passwords, so we need a person-focused approach to maximize security. This is a very similar idea to our previous post on an experimental foundation for statistics. Looks like Di Cook and others are already way ahead of us on this idea. It would be interesting to redefine optimality incorporating the knowledge that most of the time it is a person running the statistics. 
3. This is another fascinating article about the math education wars. It starts off as the typical dueling schools issue in academia - two different schools of thought who routinely go after the other side. But the interesting thing here is it sounds like one side of this math debate is being waged by a person collecting data and the other is being waged by a side that isn’t. It is interesting how many areas are being touched by data - including what kind of math we should teach. 
4. I’m going to visit Minnesota in a couple of weeks. I was so pumped up to be an outlaw. Looks like I’m just a regular law abiding citizen though….
5. Here are outstanding summaries of what went on at the Carl Morris Big Data conference this last week. Tons of interesting stuff there. Parts one, two, and three.