[R] (no answer)

[(Ted Harding)]

On 01-Apr-06 Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
> I have never taken a statistics class nor read a statistics text, but
> I am in dire need of help with a trivial data analysis problem for
> which I need to write a report in two hours.  I have spent 10,000
> hours of study in my field of expertise (high frequency noise-making
> plant biology) but I've always thought that statistics is something
> that can be mastered on short notice.

Dear Ibn Fuld (I apologise for rewriting your name correctly,
and I do appreciate the problems of people who do not natively
speak English, but I thought that doind so would be useful for
the members of the list who have the coverse problem),

You have an evidently complex problem there, but apparently a
very short time in which to solve it. Happily, I see a very
simple solution.

Just talk to your plants, ask them how they are, record their
acoustic responses, and use your existing expertise to analyse
and interpret the latter. I judge that you need to learn nothing
new to do this, your institution should posses the required
technology, and I suspect that little if any new R code would be
required.

Good luck,
ZB <zaphod.beeblebrox at cosmos.god.disorg>


> Briefly, I have an experiment in which a response variable is
> repeatedly measured at 1-day intervals, except that after a plant
> becomes sick, it is measured every three days.  We forgot to randomize
> on one of the important variables (soil pH) and we forgot to measure
> the soil pH.  Plants that begin to respond to treatment are harvested
> and eaten (deep fried if they don't look so good), but we want to make
> an inference about long-term responses.  In addition, we forgot to
> measure the response on some of the days before the plant was
> terminated.  Some baseline variables were not measured for some
> plants, when some of the other variables looked OK.  The response
> variable is only known to exceed a certain value in some cases, and in
> others is only known to be less than a certain value.  The response
> variable also has a great number of ties at zero, and has extreme high
> outliers.  The variability of responses seems to depend on whether
> there was missing variables for the plant.  And halfway through the
> experiment we changed instrumentation and personnel.  All of these
> problems seem trivial when compared to what I have to deal with every
> day in measuring plant sounds, so I hope that someone can help me as
> soon as possible.  I would appreciate receiving a few paragraphs of
> description of the analysis that I can include in my report, and I
> would like to receive R code to analyze the data no matter which
> variables I collect.  I do value your time, so you will get my
> everlasting thanks.
> 
> 
> Note that I will be out of the office from 1:15pm to 1:25pm today.
> This information should be valuable to many.
> 
> I. Ben Fuld
> Technical University of Plant Kinetics
> Slapout, Alabama
> 
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
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Date: 01-Apr-06                                       Time: 15:44:50
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