"Allow me to re-introduce myself…"

My name is Matt. I do stats.

But you already knew that.

My intention is for this site to be a platform for me to talk about interesting topics and problems that I find in the world of statistics. So theoretically, that’s what you can expect to find here.

Why? Because when I say I’m a statistician, people always go “man, I hated/failed that class.” First of all, that’s unfortunate, because that means it’s probably being taught or explained poorly, and that’s something I hope my students and colleagues will say I’m doing my part to eliminate. Second, what is the purpose of saying that? How exactly am I expected to respond to this statement? I’m being completely serious, here. Is there any other profession where this happens? Nobody says “I got a D in Biology” to their doctor, do they?

So hopefully, you’ll learn something here, even if it’s just one of you.

Theoretically.

What this site will likely end up being is some sort of sporadic stream of consciousness on… college football, probably. I don’t intend for that to be the case, but I know myself better than you do, so I’m just being honest. I mean, there’s clearly already a post about sports, so… Still, hopefully someone will learn something.

Basically, at some point, I’ll talking about statistics, baseball, history, music, college football, comic books, Jeopardy!, and food (not necessarily in that order). So if you—

“Hold on, why is there a post before your introduction?”

Because I’m re-introducing myself. That post is from the first website I made, and some of these here words you’re reading right now are indeed re-written from another post I made on said website, which shall not be named and also no longer exists. Wait a minute, can I plagiarize myself? Remind me to look that up.

Honestly, this is pretty much the same as the old one, except better. So, I guess not the same then, huh? Whatever. Anyway, here’s what’s new:

• I kinda know how to customize this website at least a little bit and why things are showing up where they are, whereas I had absolutely no idea before.

• It has dark/light modes, and I firmly believe that no one should ever be forced to read anything on a white background. The dark mode is the default, and I actually thought about disabling light mode altogether, but decided against it for whatever reason. Thus, if you hate yourself, you can switch to light mode via the sun/moon icon in the menu.¹

• It’s compatible with and actually looks nice on mobile devices (\(n = 1\): my phone).

• So far, it seems to function acceptably with all these Firefox add-ons I’m using that sometimes break other websites. It’s worth mentioning that equations won’t render properly if you’re blocking Javascript, but if you experience any other issues with this site on your browser or on a phone/tablet, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. (Probably nothing—I do stats, not IT, remember? But I’ll give it a shot anyway.)

• The site is hosted on Netlify and generated by Hugo using the George Cushen’s Academic theme, both of which are linked at the bottom of this (and every) page. It’s obviously geared towards those in academia, which I guess I am, but I chose it because it was relatively simple to style and customize among all the others I tried. So what I’m trying to say is don’t expect me to be all academic-y on here.

• All of that stuff in the last bullet point means that I can post, edit, update, and do pretty much whatever I want from RStudio thanks to blogdown—which theoretically means that I’m actually going to do those things. I can’t even remember what my life was like prior to RStudio, and with bated breath I await the day where anything I’d ever need a computer for can be done from within RStudio. Also, is the word “bated” ever used outside of the phrase “with bated breath”?