Show all files in OS X Finder

There are various guides to this around, but most do not result in the hidden folders in the root directory (Macintosh HD) being shown. This works, though: sudo chflags -R nohidden /*

LaTeX to Microsoft Word

I've been using LaTeX for over a year now, and definitely prefer it to Word - I find it much easier to concentrate on content with its WYSIWYM rather than WYSISYG approach. Of course, most of the rest of psychology (and the world) continues to use Word, so it's harder to share content with co-authors than if I were still using Word.

Fortunately, latex2rtf provides a great solution. It auto-converts latex to an RTF file, which can then turned into a variety of formats (including DOC or DOCX) by your word processor of choice.

Now I have latex2rtf working, it's very easy to use, but getting it working was a bit of a pain. Some notes below that others may find helpful (these notes have been updated):

1. There is no installation package for Mac OS X on latex2rtf's webpage. However, it is available on https://www.macports.org/. Install MacPorts, and then install latex2rtf with the command: sudo port install latex2rtf.
2. Recently, I've been using the excellent elsarticle document class in LaTeX. latex2rtf does not seem to recognise this. So, to get referencing to work properly in latex2rtf when using elsarticle, you need to explicitly put the line: \usepackage{natbib} into your .tex file. This single addition fixes referencing.
3. In OS X, open a Terminal window, use cmd-drag to change the Terminal's directory to where your .tex file is, and simply type latex2rtf <filename>
4. latex2rtf assumes you have already processed your tex file (e.g. to PDF) and the relevant support files this creates. still exist in the directory.

Inkscape - Free vector graphics program

Vector graphics are great for producing high-quality illustrations for journal articles, but the programs I've used to date are either really expensive (Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator) or rather limited (MS PowerPoint). So, today I tried Inkscape, a free, open-source, cross-platform vector graphics program. It seems pretty good and easy to use. Note that, on a Mac, keyboard shortcuts for this program use Ctrl rather than the more usual Cmd.

Bayesian contingency chi-square in R

One of the advantages of Bayesian statistics is that they permit discussion of null results. Antony Overstall of St. Andrews has recently released a package for R called conting that handles Bayesian analysis of contingency tables in a relatively straightforward way. http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/conting/ . I had a play around with it and managed to get meaningful results in about an hour. Take a look!

Free teaching materials

Some of my teaching materials are now freely available on willslab.co.uk  Currently, you'll find some tutorials on R, a suite of software for 1st year practicals, and a formula booklet for first year stats courses. I'll add more when I have the time.

Some sobering statistics about psychological data

I've been catching up on some of the recent articles that have dealt with data quality issues in psychology. Here are three sobering statistics:

1. By some estimates, only about 1% of papers published in psychology since 1900 have involved replications (Makel et al., 2012).
2. Under certain not unreasonable assumptions, approximately one-third of published results in psychology may be false positives (Pashler & Harris, 2012).
3. Even for recently published papers, approximately 70% of requests for raw data end in failure (Wicherts et al., 2006).

So, if your research depends on a previous result (and whose doesn't to some extent?), start your experiment series with a direct replication, and publish your raw data.

Travel website with office hours! a.k.a. Only In Academia

Trying to book a flight with the university's travel agent. It's already taken two days to get my budget code back on to their system. Today, I almost book a flight, but my passport is at home and I can't complete the booking without it. No worries, I think. I'll just make the booking when I get home. No chance. Clicking on my choice of flight, the website tells me I cannot proceed with this option because it is out of office hours. What, so the computers get to go home in the evenings !?!