Appunti di Sociologia

Gli appunti di Sociospunti su Posterous

Filed under: English

A free book on statistics with R

G Jay Kerns has published a 400+ page introductory text on Probability and Statistics. All of the examples and illustrations are done using R (as Jay puts it, "The people at the party are Probability and Statistics; the handshake is R") so if you want to brush up on your probability and learn R at the same time, this might be a good resource. It would also be great for teaching: Jay wrote the book based on an undergraduate course he gave at Youngstown State University. There's also a plug-in for R Commander to access some of the methods via dialogs.

Jay's book is free, in both senses of the word. You can download the PDF for free from Lulu, or purchase a printed copy for just over $30. Jay has also published all of the LaTeX sources if you want to build the book yourself. And if you're already using R, you can read the book with just three commands:

install.packages("IPSUR")
library(IPSUR)
read(IPSUR)

original post on R-evolution Analytics

Forbidden to sit! - Vietato sedersi!

EN - In Italy, many municipalities have introduced regulations that prohibit people from sitting and consuming not only alcohol, but also food, in streets. However, people continue to hang around and to meet "in piazza", transforming non-places in social spaces, and re-appropriating (or constructing) public spaces.

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IT - In Italia, molti comuni hanno introdotto regolamenti che vietano alle persone di sedersi per strada e di consumare non solo alcol, ma anche cibo. Ma la gente continua a passeggiare e ad incontrarsi "in piazza", trasformando non-luoghi in spazi sociali, e riappropriandosi (o costruendo) spazi pubblici.

Where the green ants dream

«The excommunication of territorial “divinities”, the deconsecration of places haunted by the story-spirit, and the extension of neutral thus deprived of legitimacy have marked the disappearance and fragmentation of the narrations that organized frontiers and appropriations»

De Certeau (Spatial Stories, cap. IX in The practice of everyday life)

In this trailer (and of course in the film), it is possible to see, besides the "deconsecration of places haunted by the holy spirit", the fragmentation of different stories referring to different “authorising references”. The social/cultural elaboration of the conflict creates in turn other stories and conflicts: finally, the court is expected to find a negotiated (spatial) story.

Nomadic lifestyles

Nomadisms

From my presentation in Koper (July 9th): "Have we Mediterraneans ever been modern? Traditions, places and objects in territorial identities".

(by the way, it has been very difficult to retrieve a photo of a non-white businessman!)
Posterous theme by Cory Watilo
  
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