"R for Researchers" Now Online
R has become much more popular over the past few years, to the point that the "big three" statistical packages at the SSCC have changed from Stata, SAS, and SPSS to Stata, R, and SAS. We are therefore pleased to announce the publication of our online introduction to R, based on Mark Banghart's popular "R for Researchers" workshop. This allows SSCC members to learn R when ever they need it, as well as making the content available to the research community at large.
Mark comes to us from the Statistics Department, so R for Researchers also covers tools the Statistics Department uses along with R, like Git and Markdown. It also reflects their statistical practices, such as an emphasis on regression diagnostics. Watch for articles in the SSCC's Statistical Computing Knowledge Base on how to do similar things in Stata and other packages in the near future.
Spring Courses of Interest
The SSCC's spring training schedule has not yet been set, but we'd like to draw your attention to two training opportunities not offered by the SSCC:
One is Computer Science 368: Introduction to R Programming for Scientific Research. This may be a good alternative to our R for Researchers if you need credit for the time spent. It is also a longer course and thus, we presume, broader. On the other hand it will be less focused on the needs of social scientists.
The other is an online course taught by Cornell faculty on Understanding Social and Economic Data. This includes a detailed overview of the US federal statistical system. Brent Hueth of the new Federal Statistical Research Data Center highly recommends it for anyone interested in using the FSRDC and invites anyone who is considering taking the course to talk to him about it.
Be Prepared to Work from Home
While this winter is off to a promising start, plan on a few days where the weather makes working from home a very attractive option. Remote access to SSCC resources can make it a productive one too.
The easiest way to work from home is to log into Winstat, but if a severe storm kept everyone home we might run out of licenses for it. Thus we suggest having a backup plan as well, such as using Remote Desktop to connect to your office computer. Working From Home and Other Remote Locations has options and links to instructions. We highly recommend trying out the tools you'd want to use before severe weather strikes, when it will be easier for us to help if you run into problems.
Final Office 365 Migration Update
The SSCC's migration to Office 365 is now complete, and we plan to shut down the SSCC email server on November 30. We have worked very hard to ensure no email user is left behind in this migration. Some SSCC email accounts will not be migrated, but we've reached out to their owners multiple times to ensure they are not relying on those accounts. If your SSCC email account has not been migrated and you still rely on it, contact the help desk immediately. All unmigrated SSCC email accounts will stop working when we shut down the SSCC email server on November 30. Note that this will not affect access to Winstat, Linstat, and other SSCC services, just email.
Not sure if you've migrated or not? Try setting an email forward on the SSCC email server. If you're told to do it in Office 365 instead, you've migrated.
Tip: Reporting Spam in Outlook
Many SSCC members have noticed an increase in the amount of spam reaching their Inbox after migrating to Office 365. The University elected not to use Microsoft's spam filtering and to rely on a DoIT-provided system instead. Thus trying to use the junk filtering built into Outlook will not be helpful and may actually make things worse. Instead, click on the Report Spam button provided in Outlook and the Outlook Web App. This will forward the message to an email address DoIT sets aside for collecting spam their filter did not detect. They can then use it to improve their filtering. Full instructions can be found in the DoIT KnowledgeBase.
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