Sunday data/statistics link roundup (10/13/13)

1. A really interesting comparison between educational and TV menus (via Rafa). On a related note, it will be interesting to see how/whether the traditional educational system will be disrupted. I’m as into the MOOC thing as the next guy, but I’m not sure I buy a series of pictures from your computer as “validation” you took/know the material for a course. Also I’m not 100% sure about what this is, but it has the potential to be kind of awesome - the Moocdemic.
2. This piece of “investigative journalism” had the open-access internet up in arms. The piece shows pretty clearly that there are bottom-feeding journals who will use unscrupulous tactics and claim peer review while doing no such thing. But it says basically nothing about open access as far as I can tell. On a related note, a couple of years ago we developed an economic model for peer review, then tested the model out. In a very contrived/controlled system we showed peer review improves accuracy, even when people aren’t incentivized to review.
3. Related to our guest post on NIH study sections is this pretty depressing piece in Nature.
4. One of JHU Biostat’s NSF graduate research fellows was interviewed by Amstat News.
5. Jenny B. has some great EDA lectures you should check out.