Here’s something from from Witold’s slides on baggr, an R package (built on Stan) that does hierarchical modeling for meta-analysis:
Overall goals:
1. Implement all basic meta-analysis models and tools
2. Focus on accessibility, model criticism and comparison
3. Help people avoid basic mistakes
4. Keep the framework flexible and extend to more models(Probably) not our goal:
5. Build a package for people who already build their models in Stan
I really like this practice of specifying goals. This is so basic that it seems like we should always be doing it—but so often we don’t! Also I like the bit where he specifies something that’s not in his goals.
Again, this all seems so natural when we see it, but it’s something we don’t usually do. We should.
We do, mostly, but if not written then mentally, where the goals are slippery and (unconsciously) changeable.
I’m following an online guitar academy from New York and they ask people to keep track of weekly, monthly, six-monthly, longer term goals. I’ve been doing this for two years with guitar practice and it’s really effective. This is how I should have spent my entire life (not playing guitar, but that would have been great too). Instead, in my own it was one disorganized piece of work after another, going wherever things take me; there should be room for taking random exploratory walks, but that should not be the main diet.
I mean in New York, not from New York.
I updated the package on CRAN recently, so people should check it out. And the project goals are still the same!