Sunday data/statistics link roundup (8/4/13)

1. The $4 million teacher. I love the idea that teaching is becoming a competitive industry where the best will get the kind of pay they really really deserve. I can’t think of another profession where the ratio of (if you are good at how much influence you have on the world)/(salary) is so incredibly large. MOOC’s may contribute to this, that is if they aren’t felled by the ecological fallacy (via Alex N.).
2. The NIH is considering requiring replication of results (via Rafa). Interestingly, the article talks about reproducibility, as opposed to replication, throughout most of the text.
3. R  jobs on the rise! Pair that with this rather intense critique of Marie Davidian’s interview about big data because she didn’t mention R. I think R/software development is definitely coming into its own as a critical part of any statistician’s toolbox. As that happens we need to take more and more care to include relevant training in version control, software development, and documentation for our students.
4. Not technically statistics, but holy crap a 600,000 megapixel picture?
5. A short history of data science. Not many card-carrying statisticians make the history, which is a shame, given all the good they have contributed to the development of the foundations of this exciting discipline (via Rafa).
6. For those of you at JSM 2013, make sure you wear out that hashtag (#JSM2013) for those of us on the outside looking in. Watch out for the Lumley 12 and make sure you check out Shirley’s talk, Lumley and Hadley together, this interesting looking ethics session, and Martin doing his fMRI thang,  among others….