A long-standing hurdle to new R users has been the disconnect between using MS Excel as the primary tool for data-collection and exploration, and the intermediate step of importing data into R as a plain-text file (.csv or .txt). There have been a couple of packages which have attempted to...

I just launched the rebooted version of my blog. This is something I have long been meaning to do. In my old setup, I had the blog running on google’s blogger platform, and I was managing my personal website using the Django web-application framework. This resulted in an unnecessarily complicated...

I just found this document on my computer.  It is a short synopsis of the history of evolutionary thought that I wrote for a class in my first year of grad school.  It is not perfect or complete, but I thought it was worth posting.  Please add corrections or comments below.The theory...

UPDATE 01/13/15: This post is not up to date with the most current version of dplyr.  Major differences include a new pipe operator (i.e. all instances of %.%. below should be %>%). There are likely other differences as well. If you are just getting started in R, checkout my post on...

Rob Scott and I just published a new paper in AJPA on the issues surrounding the use of Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) in ecomorphology.2014 - Barr, WA and Scott, RS. Phylogenetic comparative methods complement discriminant function analysis in ecomorphology.  American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 153:663 - 674. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22462Ecomorphology uses anatomical characteristics to...