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Integrated Campaigns | How to Create Online-to-Offline Experiences

Marketing Technology

In the modern marketer’s race to capture buyer attention and create meaningful experiences, differentiation is more important than ever.

Digital tactics are effective, but too much can create noise, drowning out your brand message and leaving consumers with the negative side effects of digital overload. Offline channels like direct mail, however, remain incredibly effective at driving awareness and engagement.

In addition, sending physical and digital items like direct mail, custom gifts, corporate swag to your audience creates a more emotional experience than digital outreach—meaning it’s a better tool for building relationships.

Direct mail and other offline channels are not new, but the old barriers to entry with these strategies have been overcome: Sending Platforms enable companies to automate personalized offline campaigns like direct mail and measure ROI. Thanks to tools like Marketo, it’s possible to integrate with Sending Platforms and orchestrate online-to-offline campaigns, where an offline experience is triggered by marketing automation.

The ability to orchestrate offline touchpoints enables marketers to be strategic with how they execute these integrated campaigns. Direct mail can be programmed to run alongside your emails, targeted ads, content, and other digital channels; it can also be triggered based on data like engagement, lifecycle stage, predictive data, or intent. And the ROI is clear: Marketers are seeing up to 450% return on new revenue on their integrated direct mail campaigns

When it comes to go-market-strategy, utilizing offline channels has become table stakes.

We believe authentic relationships with your buyers and customers are achievable in a cluttered, digital world. And enabling online-to-offline experiences is one of the ways we do that. Keep reading for tactical integrated campaign ideas that generate seamless online-to-offline experiences.

3 Online-to-Offline Campaigns Made Possible with Marketo

Demand Generation

Engage Leads That Demonstrate Intent

Most nurture campaigns involve a series of emails sharing information to interest potential buyers: eBooks, case studies, webinars, one-pagers, and more. But simply putting potential buyers into a nurture isn’t enough; you need to understand who is engaging with that content and demonstrating intent to buy. Then you can invest in creating an offline experience with something like an inexpensive eGift card built into your digital content offers.

For example: By integrating Marketo with a Sendoso, you can trigger an automated email after someone downloads an eBook with the eBook link and a $5 coffee eGift card. Include a message thanking them for their interest in your content and offering to buy them a coffee while they read. Your recipient gets to choose where they want to redeem the coffee in person and then has a positive, offline experience associated with your brand.

eGifts have been shown to increase demo attendance by 20%, so we know that these offline experience can drive engagement around virtual events. Consider triggering an automated email on the day of a webinar to remind people of the event and give them something to sip on while they attend.

As a best practice, we recommend putting an eGift touch later in your nurture campaigns, when audience members who aren’t a good fit have opted themselves out and you can put more investment into your target audience.

Account-Based Marketing

Open Doors and Build Relationships

Your top prospects in target accounts are probably top targets for other companies, as well. And you’re all trying to reach the same people. An offline experience as part of an integrated campaign can differentiate your outreach from what lands in someone’s voicemail or inbox.

Lay the foundations of your integrated campaign with online channels. Utilize the same branding and messaging themes across email, targeted ads, and social media—all of which you can orchestrate through Marketo. When Marketo’s lead scoring tools identify prospects who are engaging and showing intent, Marketo’s integration with a sending platform can trigger direct mail sends that will land on their desks.

Getting a package on your desk is an experience—one that has been proven to drive results. Companies are able to convert an average of 1 in 3 cold leads to meaningful conversations with a direct mail touch. Because this is a critical touchpoint, pair together elements that are both informative and enjoyable in your direct mail piece.

Printed collateral like one-pagers, case studies, and eBooks are good educational elements to send with branded items like socks, YETI mugs, or coffee grounds. Include a handwritten note (automated via a Sending Platform) that explains why you sent the items and what value you’re offering. Puns can come in very handy here (i.e. send a pair of socks with a note that says, “I think we’d make a great pair. I’d love to learn more about your goals for this year.”)

Once the package is received, the integration will alert your sales reps so that they can coordinate timely follow up.

Field Events

Drive Attendance and Post-Event Conversations

Field events are a big investment, so it’s important to get as much return as possible and be able to measure that return. The experience starts with your invitations. Direct mail can increase response rates up to 55%, so consider sending a physical invitation, video mailer, or 3D pop-up box in addition to your digital outreach in order to drive registrations.

Generating ROI on events also means continuing the engagement after someone attends your event. They’ve shown a lot of engagement and interest by physically interacting with your brand, which should be reflected in their Marketo lead score. For post-event engagement, you can set up an automated direct mail send that would trigger when a contact’s status changes to “Attended.”

The follow-up direct mail piece could potentially be informational material that summarizes the topics covered at the event or a branded swag item with the same theme as your event. Get creative on how you tie the send to your event (Did you sponsor a conference and host a happy hour in Arizona? Put a desert-themed logo on a water bottle and send it to attendees so they’ll remember the specific event where they engaged with your brand). Include a handwritten note each attendee signed by a sales rep. One-to-one direct mail sends from sales reps can yield up to 60% conversion rates to meetings

The integration also enables you to tag all the direct mail sends to campaigns in your CRM in order to measure the ROI. With the ability to automate, personalize, and measure direct mail success within Marketo, marketers are seeing ROI across the funnel. But they aren’t using it as a solo channel for engagement. They’re coordinating these touchpoints with digital channels and using data to trigger personalized offline experiences.


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Architecture Innovation

Buzzing, tweeting, now everybody can get a taste of being stalked

There is something sneaky about all this social media activity, people are turning into stalkers in their droves. Google Buzz just made this dawn on me. It can be quite uncomfortable to think that you are unwitting turning yourself into a “self strip view broadcaster”.

I’ve started buzzing, stumbling upon it’s activation at a browser restart. After a couple of days, I’m reconsidering the whole thing: why am I getting involved in all this?

Having been involved in innovations in social networking and online communities for a number of years, I was always going to try the latest stuff to see if it could help in my job. Little did I realise the slippery nature of all this. It is somewhat like “zapping” with your TV remote control, pointless but you somehow keep doing it until something urgent drag you away from the sofa. Before you know it you’ve spent a couple of hours watching the TV but seeing absolutely nothing. What a waste that is!

I started tweeting because I was too lazy to blog, it was just an excuse for me and I hoped to learn something in the process.

My idea of blogging has always been measured, I don’t like all the self broadcasting that goes with it, I didn’t want to write “hello world” program codes or regurgitate what others have been saying somewhere else.

I tried Google Wave and I never really found a reason to stick to it. I could imagine tons of use though, I just wasn’t ready for any of those – still am not.

Now I’ve joined Google Buzz, it’s giving me the goose bumps for it’s eerie stalker feeling. I never felt stalked like this before, it’s not due to my contact list or my friends activities, but rather it is the fact that I kept seeing a mirror reflection of my activities in many places of my Google account. Then you start to think: if I click on any link, it’s likely being broadcast. For someone  who is a private person by nature, this freaks me out.

A few years ago, I’d already taken a giant step by going out there and putting pictures, comments and various things online. I could always do it again, when I get a chance, and it felt ok. But, the idea that something follows me and tells the world about what I’m doing doesn’t feel right, I have no control over it. It is bad enough that this is happening, street CCTV cameras are an example, it’s much worse when you can actually see realtime the footages. That is what is troubling, and Google seemed to have thought none of that. Of course, when you’ve not known anything else you would just adapt to it.

There you go, the bucket must stop somewhere. I’ve got nothing to hide, but I don’t want to broadcast everything either. This is a case of a feature’s default option in user’s disadvantage. That is a hindrance to user acceptance from my point of view, and Google failed in this case. This case inspires me to write an architecture principle: design for acceptance, the default features and options must cater for user’s natural preferences and behaviour.

3 replies on “Buzzing, tweeting, now everybody can get a taste of being stalked”

so, will you keep on buzzing or will you cancel your account? For the moment Google Buzz seems to be in hypergrowth.. I like it, if they can sort our real integration with Twitter and also include Facebook I will like it a lot more.. 😉

It’s nice to be able to integrate these things, but I want the ability to selectively broadcast things. I think various online personas fullfil different needs, you can’t just treat them all the same way for all people. So, I might have to cancel my account, as I don’t have the level of control I’d like to have at the moment. For now I’m watching it with some apprehension, not fully trusting it as yet.

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Gary Braasch

An Important Film Series: Young Voices on Climate Change

The harsh realities of climate change will be more pronounced over the lifetimes of our young people than in those of older Americans.  But in our society, children seldom get …

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Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Destination India

What would it be like driving overland from London — East of Suez and over the Khyber Pass — to India ? Day by day and mile by mile, we found out, recording our impressions and experiences of people, landscape, and encounters as we drove a 107″ wheel base Land Rover from London to Jaipur. The year was 1956; the months July and August. Our 5,000 mile journey took us across the ecological and cultural limes distinguishing Europe from Asia and into the Indian subcontinent. As freshly minted PhDs, 26- and 28-years-old, we were open to adventure and to knowledge of the other. Funded by a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training fellowship, we found ourselves positioned at the cusp of the area studies era generated by the end of colonial rule.

Modernization theory was regnant then and we argued that it was wrong to suppose that tradition would be swept into the dust bin of history; that “they” would become like “us”. We showed how and why tradition was often adaptive, change dialectical not dichotomous, and “we” could learn from “them.” We also learned an important methodological lesson being there. Many western scholars of “new nations” sought to find universal truths, truths that were said to be true everywhere and always. We found ourselves learning from the other and grounding our concepts and categories in local knowledge and practice. We characterized our approach as situated knowledge, knowledge that arises out of particular times, places and circumstances, and that results in contextual rather than universal truths. Travelling through countries of western Asia — Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan — shaped our perspective. We learned that if India was less developed than the countries of Western Europe, it was more developed than the countries lying between western Europe and South Asia.

At Harvard where we did our PhDs in Political Science, we studied comparative politics and nationalism with Samuel Beer, Rupert Emerson, and Carl Friedrich. We learned to analyze institutions, politics, and, even then, policy as they were defined by European and American historical experience. Our graduate education at Harvard in the mid-1950s didn’t equip us (as our students at the University of Chicago were equipped from the mid-1960s onward) with knowledge of South Asian languages, history, and culture. (The Eisenhower administration introduced the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) South Asia area and language programs in the post-Sputnik area.) We learned Hindi on our own and at the Landour Language School and about India’s history, culture, and society while doing research in India. Our openness to area and language knowledge was partly a consequence of working while junior faculty at Harvard with David Riesman in his course on American Character and Social Structure, and with Erik Erikson in his course and seminar on life history and identity formation. These experiences prepared us intellectually and emotionally better than did our graduate education in political science to respond to living in and learning from India. They liberated us from the disciplinary straight-jacket of political science and opened the way for us to be humanistic social scientists more concerned with meaning than with causation.

From 1956-57 onward, roughly every fourth year until 1999-2000, we took leave to do research in India. In all, we spent eleven years on the sub-continent doing research. Starting with our second research year, 1962-63, the first of our three children accompanied us. Over the subsequent nine research years our children travelled to India with us. They attended Indian schools: St. Xaviers and Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls Public School in Jaipur, the Woodstock School in Mussoorie/Landour. Living in India they experienced Indian family life and formed lasting friendships. In the process they acquired a passable Hindi. Beginning in 2001, as an aspect of our retirement arrangements, we have been able to spend the winter months, January through March, living and working in Jaipur.

India captured our imagination as a place to encounter, study, and learn from. We drove to overland from London in a Land Rover in order to be there. And we’ve spent the subsequent 50 years researching, theorizing, teaching, and writing about this country.

Featured image: In front of the Jaipur Palace, India, 1956. Photo by Marc Riboud. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Essential Oils for Sleep

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Everyday Essentials by Plant Therapy

Essential Oils for Sleep

Essential Oils for Sleep2:00 am…2:20 am… 2:47 am ….still no sleep.

There’s nothing worse than sleepless nights. Sometimes it goes on for days, sometimes for months or years. But no matter how long it lasts, it’s miserable.

There are tons of reasons for lack of sleep. Noise, exposure to electronic devices,  hormone changes, stress, or worry: Take your pick. And whatever the reason, not sleeping can seriously affect your health.

Essential oils can promote relaxation, helping with falling asleep.

Essential Oils for SleepCalming not only to the mind but also to the body, these oils can help to quiet intrusive thoughts, and relax tense muscles, promoting sleep. Plant Therapy has some great synergies just for this purpose.

Just One Sleep Blend

Essential Oils for SleepYou can also create your own custom blends that help promote good sleep cycles

Plant Therapy has this great chart, showcasing oils that can help you get some zzzzz’s;

Download Sleep Chart HERE :

Essential Oils for Sleep

78 thoughts on “Essential Oils for Sleep”

  • I use bergamot all the time mixed with Lavendar for sleep. May have to add in a little sandalwood. Hmmm.

  • I get excited about diffusing during the day, but at night I really look forward to drifting off while relaxing.

  • I tried the just one sleep blend above and it was very relaxing, calming, great for winding down to get some rest. Never would of thought to put all of those oils together. I used cedarwood atlas since I did not have Himalayan, and I still enjoyed the blend. Thanks for posting!

  • Looking for sleep essential oils. I like the idea of creating a personalized blend. I appreciate the chart with the top 20 essential oils for sleep. Does Plant Therapy (PT) have another resource that indicates how many drops to use for each one? Thank You! I appreciate You.

  • I’m seeing Cedarwood Virginian in the chart. Would Cedarwood Virginian be more effective compared to other Cedarwoods to promote better sleep?

  • Relax is our favorite evening oil to diffuse! I use Sweet Slumber on my kids before bed, except for last night when I couldn’t find it (thanks, toddler), so I used Calming the Child instead. It wasn’t as effective, but it still did the job. I love that you guys offer SO many options for helping to wind down at the end of the day!

  • I’ve had a hard time finding a good sleep blend. The first one recommended to me by a friend was Lavender and Cedarwood, but I found that I didn’t like the Cedarwood smell at all. I can’t sleep if I’m being exposed to a smell I don’t like. I’m assuming I may not like a lot of the more woody scents as well, despite loving fresh Christmas trees in the house.. And, I’m not a huge fan of citrus smells, especially for sleeping. And my eyes got teary and burned a bit diffusing Ylang Ylang, so my options have become limited. I’m assuming I’ll have trouble with anything else smelling overly sweet as well. Most of the relaxation/sleep blends have at least one of these oils, so I’m trying to make my own blend.
    The next blend I want to try is Lavender, Frankincense, and Ginger because I often feel some stomach discomfort when I lay down. I need to test a small amount first and see how those smell together. I am also considering purchasing Roman Chamomile but have no idea what to expect for the smell. I also don’t want to be completely knocked out/feel drugged, so it’ll be a careful trial and error. Does anyone have any additional suggestions? I know Vetiver is good for seep but I’m wondering if it, and Roman Chamomile for that matter, could be too sedating. Thanks!

    1. Hello Jessie! Sorry to hear you’re having a hard time finding a sleep blend that smells good to you. Vetiver, Lavender and Roman Chamomile are all excellent choices to help relax you and help with getting a good nights rest. I would suggest starting with smaller amounts of each oil and testing that out, before adding more to be sure it’s not something that is too sedating for you. Hope it helps!

    2. That is so relatable, I can definitely understand the frustration. Eos and blends are very personal. I think you are on the right track to test simple 3 eo blends, or even 2, so its easier to note and compare the effects. One of my children loves just Amyris and Vetiver, alternates that with Nighty Night. It took me years to love Roman Chamomile, after I learned to use less in a recipe meant for non-topical use. Same with the Cedarwoods, less is more. Have you given Ho Wood a try?

  • Great info!! I was officially a convert once i realized just how effective EO’s are in sleep support. I find vetiver does the trick best – I actually hated the smell at first, but it’s really grown on me, and I now associate the smell with bedtime. Will definitely be trying some of these synergies soon!

    1. Thank you for sharing, Gaby! Vetiver is definitely one of those oils that has to grow on you, if you don’t love it much at first. That is how it was for me, so I understand where you are coming from! But boy, does it work great for sleeping!!

  • I am totally in love with Relax synergy for my bedtime to keeps me sleep through the night. Works like a charm!

  • Synergies with Valerian Root have helped immensely when trying to sleep post-night shift. Valerian Root is this nurses dream!

  • I just started using nighty night again for my daughter. The blue tansy almost made me choke while I was doing bedtime with her, but she woke up happy as a lark. So I can only assume she had a really good night of sleep!

    1. Blue Tansy can definitely be a divisive oil – some people love the smell and others are not so found of it! But that is wonderful it helped your daughter get a good night of sleep!

  • I never have a sleepness night anyone since I started using essential oils. I love diffusing several oils before bed, I get so excited!!

  • I’ve always had a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep. I tried Relax and Tranquil, but they didn’t help. Relax actually gives me a headache, so I gave it to my son. He found that it helps him get rid of headaches. I decided to try Sweet Slumber and that has helped. Thank you for the blend suggestion and the chart. I’m going to give the blend a try and see if that helps too.

  • Thanks for this. I am constantly looking for variations of sleep blends to help my daughter to go to bed in reasonable time. We already have Nighty night and currently are experimenting with Vetiver. The table is very helpful.

  • I love cedarwood and vetiver. Can you recommend blend that has both? Would the two compliment one another?

    1. Lori, we do have a diffuser blend that includes both Cedarwood and Vetiver — It is called Deep Woods: Add 4 drops Balsam Fir, 3 drops Fir Needle, 2 drops Cedarwood Atlas, and 1 drop Vetiver. Hope you love it!

  • I love the sleep chart! I also love how the constituents are listed. This is SUPER helpful!! You should make more charts like this!!!

  • I am so happy that most people do not know anything about the most serious type of insomnia. This kind is not just a matter of calming down. I am a lifelong insomniac because of brain and body chemistry. I can relax. If I don’t do it naturally, then I know how to force myself to do it. However, when I am at the point of losing consciousness I seem to bounce off a wall. I wake up. This happens over and over, sometimes once or twice and sometimes all night long. Even so, some sleep blends can help. They can’t give me complete relief, but they can help me relax and sometimes help me stay asleep once I am asleep. Even serious sleep abnormalities can benefit from essential oils!

  • I’m just wondering why sweet orange, frankincense and Cedarwood himalayan aren’t on the top 20 list if they’re in the sleep blend recipe? Also could I substitute Cedarwood Atlas for the himalayan? Thanks

    1. You could substitute, yes. Also, this is not a conclusive list. Some oils make great options when paired with other oils.

  • I guess I need to blend up some concoctions to see if I can get something to help with sleep. Not a lavender fan but have tried a few of the synergies which did not help. Thanks for the ideas and the chart!

  • I’ve always had troubles whit falling a sleep, and also with sleeping trough the night. I used lavender years ago but for some reason stopped using it. The last couple of years I started using melatonin, but I needed more and more to help me fall asleep and I still woke up during the night. Last year my interest in herbs came back and with it the use of lavender to help me sleep. I’n happy to say I no longer use the melatonin.Recently I learned it’s better to rotate oils instead of using the same one for a long period of time. So after raving reviews about Sweet Slumber my second order from PT contained a bottle of this synergy. It arrived last Tuesday and it didn’t disappoint. It helps me fall a sleep fast and I dont’t wake up during the night(with the exception of a thunderstorm waking us up, but I think nobody slept trough that one ) I’m so happy to discover PT and there facebook group. So much great info on this site and in the FBgroup.
    Can I rotate lavender and sweet slumber or should I add some other oils(singles or synergies)to?

  • My now ex-wife got me using essential oils. Until she got me to try diffusing Sleep Aid when I went to bed in the mornings (yay night shift!), I would sometimes get less than 4 hours of sleep. Now all I do is smell the 4 blends I use to help me sleep and use whichever one smells the best that morning.

  • This is great timing! Vetiver and sweet orangehas always been my go to for sleep but I think I am sentisised to it now! Always ready to try new oils to promote a restful sleep

  • Thanks! This is great! My husband has issues falling/staying asleep at least a few times a week. I’m going to try the blend and definitely use the chart to create my own.
    I love the Nighty Night for my kids.

  • I used away dreams last night & slept Great!! Have been having sinus headaches & the blue tansy helped with that.

  • I’ve always had a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep. I recently switched to sweet slumber for my night time diffuser session because it doesn’t have Lavender and, I also use the relax roll on on my wrist and neck, works amazing! I found my night time regime! Also, on a side note, I was so excited when I bought Jasmine I brought it to work to have all the girls smell it and I put a drop neat on my neck, it was a struggle to stay awake lol Super strong oil that one!

  • I have so many of these oils, and use them for my boys to help sleep but for some reason always forget or neglect to use them for me to help me fall asleep quickly. I need to change that up as my sleep has been in need for awhile now.

  • I have no problems going to sleep. I just wake up every 2 hours it seems like. Just received the Relax roll-on during CAM and will definitely try it out. I am desperate to get a good night’s rest.

    1. It sounds like you really know what you like for a good nights sleep, Sarah! Thank you for sharing!

    1. Sweet Slumber is one of my favorites! I use for my kids and for myself – it just smells so good 🙂 We are so glad you like this chart and hope it helps!

  • The chart is helpful! I love lists of what oils are good for specific things. I usually blend and diffuse individual PT oils at night but I just ordered Relax Synergy. I am looking forward to trying it out and seeing if it helps me fall asleep quicker, and sleep better. My insomnia comes and goes in waves but when it comes I can be awake for hours on end, despite being exhausted. My mind won’t turn off and allow me to sleep.

  • Which blend would work well for a 10 year old who has trouble getting to sleep and waking up before completely rested? He recently went through a stressful event which is likely the cause of his trouble. We have tried a combo of Self Esteem and Worry Free on a bracelet during the day for anxiety, and that has worked well. Needing help for nighttime now. Thanks!

    1. I’ve had the most luck with Nighty Night for my kiddo. Diffusing it intermittently throughout the night is great.

  • I use Bergamot or Mandarin in sleep blends to help the scent of the stinkier oils that work great – Chamomile Roman, Vetiver, etc. I love them all!

  • Great blog post and I love the handy sleep chart. I suffer from insomnia and oils have helped a lot. Always looking for new ideas.

  • Relax Synergy was one of my first purchases, and one of the first I had to restock on because I love it so much! A couple drops in my diffuser helps calm and relax my brain, so I can drift off to sleep 🙂

  • i love the relax synergy for myself at bedtime and nighty night for my toddler! my toddler will go right to sleep if she knows in turning on her special night light! (which is her diffuser)

  • I never go with out lavender for sleep. I have to use Cederwood only when I have 8+ hours to sleep. It knocks me out.

  • In addition to sleep issues my wife adds oils to help breathing. She has been flight some congestion and it helps.

    1. I’m glad that it is helping her. Be sure to check out any ongoing sleep issues with a dr to rule out sleep apnea or other serious issues….

  • Sadly Nighty night kept me awake all night long. I have been using one drop of relax on a cotton ball under my pillow case. And its sweet dreams all night.

    1. Sandy, I’m sorry that Nighty Night is not working for you. There are some instances when Lavender can be stimulating for some. I would suggest for you to try something without Lavender and see if that helps. Like Sweet Dreams. thanks 🙂

    1. Ooh, that’s good to know. I use that one for allergies, but I am going to try this at bedtime. I’m having the worst time falling asleep lately. Looks like Relax may work, too. I’ll put that on the list.

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Spotlight Car: The 1985 Jaguar XJS V12

This 1985 Jaguar XJS is a stellar example of a single-owner car. Originally purchased in Virginia, it has spent the majority of its life carefully garaged, letting its pristine V12 engine pass the years in a time capsule, waiting for a day when it can enjoy the North Carolina roads.

Looking at it, however, you can tell that this 1985 model occupied a unique moment in Jaguar’s history. It has the long hood and swollen front fenders that instantly communicate Jaguar. In the rear, however, its sloping roof captures the spirit of the 80’s, a slightly more streamlined, aerodynamic look that pulled back from the flair of the 70’s.

Yet it also has elements to its design that seem to be a favorite of the English. Although almost 30 years old at this point, the reduction of its rear end and flattening tail lights are not too dissimilar from current Rolls-Royce design, which is also from England, of course.

When it was made, Jaguar had been producing the XJS for 10 years. As a grand touring car, the XJS is mainly about luxury and comfort. It’s a car that’s built for the highway, for long stretches between town and country, where turns aren’t tight and the most a parking space will ask of you is that you drive straight in.

With classic wire wheels, excellent leather seats, a sunroof, and enormously plentiful engine, this car will help you to enjoy the finer things in life. We look forward to introducing it at our 2014 Winter Classic event next week, and we want to encourage you to register to bid if you haven’t already done so.

With two days of bidding, you’re sure to find something that catches your eye. We hope that you remember this 1985 XJS when it comes up.

Spotlight Car: The 1985 Jaguar XJS V12 was last modified: January 7th, 2016 by Raleigh Classic Car Auctions

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Teachings from Krishna Das Session in the Old Temple

When we harshly judge others, notice how our anger, outrage, hatred, fear, is really not any different an energy than those who we judge. Really we are fundamentally no better than those we judge. We may have had a more fortunate karma, life circumstances than those we judge, but really we face similar challenges and issues. So, can we have compassion and empathy for those we would tend to judge, and simply make the clear choices, and decisions to move forward with clarity, compassion, and grace.

Is it possible to stay in unconditional love, just as the sun shines on everyone equally, regardless of their temperament. Can we be in love with everyone…

Can we be in a space where we can receive divine grace and faith, along with the truth of our divine perfection, as love and divine light.

Krishna Das Session

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Make someone smile, and see how it changes you

Members of the Rotaract Club of Trenque Lauquen donate toys during a community breakfast attended by 100 children.

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of blog posts from Youth Leadership All-Stars, participants in Rotary’s programs for young leaders, in celebration of Youth Service Month.

By Nicolas Silva, member of the Rotaract Club of Trenque Lauquen, Argentina

Four years ago, our club undertook a project called “Todo Sirve,” which literally means “’everything serves.” We collected donations in our city, including food, drinking water, clothes, children’s toys, bikes, and beds for an aboriginal low-income community, the Qom village, located in Formosa, a northern province of Argentina.

I will never forget hearing the word “gnashek” (Qom for ‘thanks’) from a woman who I was giving a box of donations to.

In that moment, my whole world stopped, and I understood how interconnected we all are. So many things that I take for granted, others need and sometimes have to do without.

More than friendship

I joined the Rotaract Club of Trenque Lauquen in 2013 looking for new friendships, but I’ve come to realize that Rotaract is so much more. I’ve been president, vice-president, and currently treasurer of my club. And I find that being in Rotaract is also a way to feel; to enjoy; to share; to serve; and above all, to learn with friends.

In spite of all the hard work that this project took – organizing meetings, sending letters, searching for people who want to join, receiving and sorting donations – I came to understand better the opportunities Rotaract provides. When we traveled within the community, we were accompanied by our fellow Rotaractors from Formosa, making the project easier and more enjoyable. Traveling 1,400 kilometers (about 870 miles) became like nothing, because we were going to serve alongside our friends.

The project taught me that we need to work together to change lives. I can assure you that if you make someone smile through service, it will change you forever. It certainly changed me – that’s when I fell in love with Rotaract.

Connect with a Rotaract Club near you and learn more!

5 thoughts on “Make someone smile, and see how it changes you

  1. Pingback: Recognize youth leaders! – Rotary Service Connections

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Sydney Hogg

Mr. Hogg has over 30 years experience in developing and delivering differentiated strategies to customers for both IT and Telecommunication Infrastructure in a wide range of industry sectors. With customer satisfaction as a key priority, Sydney specializes in spearheading innovative solutions and identifying how a differentiated approach can deliver sustainable solutions to customer challenges. In the finance industry, Sydney works with Schneider Electric’s top banking and finance customers on a daily basis, and he is a regular speaker on sustainability and efficiency topics impacting the finance industry. In addition to his role at Schneider Electric, Sydney has actively participated in the development of IT cabling solutions standards at the European and International level with a focus on the delivery of tangible system benefits to users. Mr. Hogg attended the University of Edinburgh in Scotland where he studied Chemistry and Physics.
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Simple Sunday – Suddenly Spring

After loosing all its leaves during a cold spell, our Mesquite tree finally got the message that it is Spring.

Mesquite tree

Sasha plays peek-a-boo.

And I enjoy some New Age (my new favorite warm weather wine (and lets face it, it is almost always warm weather time in Phoenix)) while Carter reads some Curious George to me in our backyard.

About Shoes

I am an elementary school teacher, a former microbiologist, a mom to a herd of two boys, and a grilled cheese sandwich and beer connoisseur.
This entry was posted in Simple Sunday and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

8 Responses to Simple Sunday – Suddenly Spring

  1. ksbeth says:

    wonderful – and today we had snow)

  2. That’s a beautiful life!😊

  3. How lovely – blue skies, pool, wine and someone reading to you. 🙂

  4. Mary Ann says:

    Looks wonderful. Spring seems to have forgotten about us. We had a few warm days in March – enough to get things to sprout – but now the daffodils look so cold sitting there in the garden getting blown around by the wind! Waiting for warmer days and flower blossoms to come our way. Send some sun to Minnesota!

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5 Tips which will make you fall in love with Linux terminal

5 Tips which will make you fall in love with Linux terminal

If you use any Linux based distribution, chances are you’re already familiar with terminal and have used it at some point or other. The Linux terminal is a text interface to your computer. Often referred to as the shell, command line, console, prompt or various other names, it can give the appearance of being complex and might be intimidating to newcomers.

If you’re just starting out with Linux chances are you’re looking for solutions on web and frequently you would encounter some terminal commands which can be difficult to remember all at once or you simply typed sl instead of ls and are wondering why is there a steam locomotive on my screen.

1. Use Aliases

Alias in English language means ‘a false or assumed identity’, and in terminal it is a way to write commands in shorthand. Let’s take an example. Imagine you have a friend named Vishvanathan and you talk to him frequently so use a pet name (or alias) Vis to address him. Similarly you can tell your computer that when you say following expression, you need it to do a specific task. You can define aliases like this

alias please_read_file="cat file.txt"

Now, if you enter please_read_file in terminal, it will show contents of file.txt present in current directory. You can change please_read_file to anything you like, even an existing command like alias date=”cat file.txt” now when you type date in terminal, it will show you contents of file.txt instead of current date and time on your system. You can get creative and use them in different ways like

alias please_read_file="cat /some/really/long/path/file.txt"
alias open_folder="cd /some/really/long/path"

In above box, please_read_file will show contents of file.txt placed in some folder whose path is difficult to remember. open_folder changes current working directory to that folder whose path is defined in alias and you can access file.txt without need to give it’s complete path, This way you can access any file which you like from a different location (perhaps a network computer whose IP address is difficult to remember) without changing your directory to that folder and then navigating back when you’re done.

Note: Aliases are temporary and your customization is lost when you close the terminal. To make these changes persist you need to setup a bash_profile check this awesome article on how to do that

2. Use ⇅ arrow keys

When you press ↑ key on keyboard you get previous command. You can use ↑ and ↓ keys multiple times to browse your history in command line even after you restart terminal. And that’s it! It’s really is that simple.

P.s. This trick also works in Minecraft.

3. Use reverse-i-search utility

This is a really useful feature and can come in handy when you need to search for something really specific. Although traversing through your search history using arrow keys works just fine, But it defeats the purpose to press ↑ 10 times (or even more) to type a small command which will take only 6 keystrokes.

974.jpg To overcome this problem, you can press Ctrl+R in terminal and you will see (reverse-i-search): appears where [current user] and [hostname] used to be. Now you can start typing your command and commands matching your search term will appear in reverse chronological order (latest to earliest).

(reverse-i-search)`date': sudo apt-get update

In the above example search term was date and command which found was sudo apt-get update . If that’s not the command you were looking for keep typing and as the search term changes, resulting command will also change accordingly. Once you find what you’re looking for just press enter(carriage return) and command will be executed in your terminal. If search term doesn’t match any command failed will appear along with last command your search term matched with

(failed reverse-i-search)`new': npx express-generator

This is useful but it only shows last command which matched and if you try to browse up or down using ⇅ keys, search utility closes.

To solve this problem and further enhance searching capabilities you can use comments in your commands and then later search for those comments. Example date #some easy_to_remember phrase here, cat command will be executed but anything after # (including the symbol) will be ignored while executing but will be stored in history.

cat -n read_file.txt # pizza

Now you can search for pizza and get exact command with custom arguments without much effort.

4. Use bash scripts for recurring combination of commands

If you need to run some commands in a specific order often, you can make a simple shell script and it will make your life so much easier. Just open up any text editor and type all commands in order you wish for them to execute. Save the file as something.sh . Now change the permission of file to allow it to be executed. You can do that in 2 ways:

  • use GUI : Open file properties ( press Ctrl + i ), Go to permissions tab and check the option saying ‘Allow executing file as a program’.
  • use CLI : Open terminal and type following chmod +x something.sh. Replace something.sh with name of file you wish to execute.
# give path of a text file to log starting time times
echo "update Started at $starttime" >>./log.txt
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y
# give path of a text file to log finish times
echo "update completed successfully on $endtime" >>./log.txt
shutdown now #shutdown pc

I made a script which updates your computer and then shuts it down afterwards. Whenever I am about to shutdown my PC, I run this script and leave the desk. It updates and shuts down automatically. You can use it too if you like. Additionally you can un-comment line 3 and 8 to log starting and ending times in a text file.

You can now run your script by typing complete path followed by name of file in terminal . Example ./updateAndShutdown.sh Here ./ means that file is in current working directory.

5. Use Tab to autocomplete paths and filenames

While typing it is easy to make typing mistakes or maybe one of your keys on your keyboard is not working and you need to find a work around. You can do this by pressing tab key on keyboard to autocomplete names of file and folders. If there are more than 1 present it will autocomplete all characters which are similar and you can type next few characters and press tab again. If you don’t know what next characters are, you can press tab twice and list of all matching search results will be displayed, you can read from list and type next few characters.

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Sonatype Unveils Full-Spectrum Software Supply Chain Management | Press Release

Sonatype Releases New Nexus Firewall Policy to Secure Software Supply Chains from "Dependency Confusion" Attacks

By Brent Kostak on March 04, 2021 Nexus Firewall
Sonatype’s new Dependency Confusion Policy Protection using Nexus Firewall and Nexus Repository can now automate dependency confusion protection at scale

CVE-2020-17479: The return of Validation Bypass (CVE-2019-19507) in `jpv`

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Developers, Rejoice: Auto-Remediation Now Available in Eclipse, IntelliJ, and Visual Studio

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OSS for Enterprise: Procure Secure Components Faster & Manage Risk Better

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The Path Forward for the Nexus Platform

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Archive for the ‘Stata Products’ Category

Just released from Stata Press: Multilevel and Longitudinal Modeling Using Stata, Fourth Edition

Stata Press is pleased to announce the release of Multilevel and Longitudinal Modeling Using Stata, Volumes I and II, Fourth Edition by Sophia Rabe-Hesketh and Anders Skrondal. This book debuted on the top 10 list for Kindle’s new releases for Probability & Statistics and consistently stayed there for weeks. This book was also on the top 10 list for Kindle’s new releases in Mathematics, competing with many other books. Read more…

Just released from Stata Press: An Introduction to Stata for Health Researchers, Fifth Edition

Stata Press is pleased to announce the release of An Introduction to Stata for Health Researchers, Fifth Edition, by Svend Juul and Morten Frydenberg. This book debuted at #1 on Kindle’s new release list for Probability & Statistics and debuted on the top ten list on Kindle’s new release list for Mathematics. Read more…

Stata 17 released

We just announced Stata 17. Visit to read all about its 29 major new features.

They are

Looking over this list of features, someone suggested that a potential marketing tagline for Stata 17 could be “Better. Faster. Stronger.” I thought Daft Punk might not like it if we used that, so we aren’t, but really, it is a great overall description of the new version.

I’ll share my thoughts on some of the new features below.

Customizable tables

There has been a long tradition in the Stata user community of commands that build various tables. These are among some of the most-used community-contributed commands! There has been an equally long tradition of the Stata user community asking us to provide more official features to assist with flexible table creation and export. Stata’s table command has been completely revamped, and a new collect command allows you to gather and manage results from multiple commands, which can then be shown in tabular form. Excel, HTML, LaTeX, Markdown, PDF, Stata SMCL, Word, and plain text are supported as export formats. I suspect almost all users will be adding this to their Stata repertoire.

Bayesian econometrics

In Stata 17, we have added many features for Bayesian econometrics, including

Many of you have been asking us for Bayesian VAR models. That’s not surprising. VAR models have many parameters but often not enough data to estimate them reliably. The Bayesian approach provides a solution by incorporating specialized priors to allow you to obtain more stable parameter estimates.

As with classical VAR models, you can perform IRF analysis and obtain dynamic forecasts but now within the Bayesian paradigm.

Bayesian panel-data models are appealing when you have few panels or when you would like to study and compare panel-specific effects.

With Bayesian DSGE models, prior distributions give you a natural way to incorporate knowledge about model parameters that is motivated by the economic theory.

As with Stata’s other Bayesian features, our aim is to make specification of these models as intuitive as possible and as similar to the specifications of the frequentist counterparts as possible.

All the above is in addition to other existing Bayesian features of interest to econometricians such as Bayesian generalized linear models and Bayesian sample-selection models.

Bayesian multilevel models

Stata users span many disciplines. In addition to the new Bayesian features above that will be of most interest to econometricians, Stata 17 also adds Bayesian multilevel modeling with support for nonlinear, joint, SEM-like, and even more models. One notable feature is the ability to fit multivariate nonlinear models containing random effects such as multivariate nonlinear growth models.

Give me more speed

As computer capabilities have grown, so have dataset sizes. With larger datasets and more computationally intensive methods comes the above request, “Give me more speed.” Sometimes, our developers say, “I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain!”, but for Stata 17, they gave us all more.

We achieved speed gains in part through careful algorithm selection and implementation and in part through integration of the Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL) to underpin many of Mata’s linear algebra functions and operators.

Read the details, including tables of specific speed gains.

Difference-in-differences (DID) models

DID and difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) models are appealing to many disciplines, including econometrics, epidemiology, political science, public policy, and many more. If you are studying the effect of a treatment (such as a drug regimen or policy) in observational data and are concerned that the effect may be influenced by time or by some other group effects, DID and DDD models provide intuitive methods to control for such unobserved effects.

New meta-analysis features

Stata 17 adds the following to the excellent (IMHO) meta-analysis suite introduced in Stata 16:

If you recognize the above, you know you want them!

And we have made these new features just as easy to use as the rest of the meta suite.

Interval-censored Cox model

The Cox proportional hazards model is used routinely by researchers from many disciplines to analyze right-censored event-time data, where time to an event of interest is observed exactly. In Stata 17, you can use it with interval-censored event-time data too!

With interval-censored event-time data, we only know that the time to an event of interest lies in an interval. For instance, think of time to cancer recurrence or to an infection or, for that matter, to any asymptomatic disease that can be detected only through periodic examinations. These are all interval-censored data, and you now have a new powerful tool to analyze them.

New lasso features

Stata 17 adds the following to the popular lasso features first introduced in Stata 16:

In fact, treatment-effects lasso combines two popular features: treatment effects and lasso. You can now incorporate many (hundreds, thousands, and more) covariates in your treatment-effects models.

You can account for clustered observations in your lasso analysis. And you can use the BIC criterion to select lasso penalty parameters.

Integration with other software and languages

Two of Stata’s great features are its extensibility and reproducibility. Stata 17 builds on that tradition by greatly enhancing its interoperability with Python and Java, adding support for Jupyter Notebook, adding JDBC support, and giving you experimental access to the H2O platform.

You could already call Python code from Stata code. Now you can call Stata from any stand-alone Python environment. Do you write Python code in Jupyter Notebook, Spyder IDE, or PyCharm IDE? Now you can call Stata directly from those environments, passing data, metadata, and results between Stata and Python seamlessly. Even your Stata graphs will show up directly in Jupyter Notebook. Our nickname for all the ways you can connect Python and Stata is ‘PyStata‘.

For Java, you could already compile Java code into .jar files and call those as plugins from Stata. Now you can embed Java code directly in your Stata do-files and ado-files, just like Mata code and Python code. Stata will compile and execute your Java code on the fly. You can interchange data, metadata, and results at will.

One of the first steps of any analysis is importing your data. Stata 17 supports JDBC for importing data from and writing data to databases that provide JDBC drivers. An important advantage JDBC has over ODBC is that JDBC drivers are platform independent, so if a database vendor provides a JDBC driver, it will work seamlessly on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Finally, some of our developers have been experimenting with connecting Stata to H2O, a scalable and distributed open-source machine-learning and predictive analytics platform. We decided to release our experiment to you. Is this something you’d like us to do more with? We look forward to your feedback.

New date and time functions

Stata 17 adds a plethora of date and time convenience functions in three main areas:

  • Datetime durations, such as ages
  • Relative dates, such as the next birthday relative to a reference date
  • Datetime components, functions that extract various components from datetime values

You’ll undoubtedly find these make your life easier when working with date and time values.

New Do-file Editor features

Don’t miss the enhancements in the Do-file Editor, including persistent bookmarks that are saved with your code, a Navigation Control providing quick access to those bookmarks and defined programs, syntax highlighting support for Java and XML (in addition to the existing support for Stata ado, Python, and Markdown), and autocompletion of quotes, parentheses, and brackets around a selection.

And there’s more

Health scientists who deal with ordinal outcomes with an overabundance of values in the lowest category will want to try the new ziologit command.

Those of you interested in panel data and categorical outcomes will be pleased to know that you can now analyze both together easily with the new xtmlogit command.

And for those of you interested in nonparametric tests of trend, we have added three new tests to the existing nptrend command.

Finally, Stata 17 runs fully natively on Apple’s new M1 Macs, known as Apple Silicon. Stata ships as a universal application that has everything necessary to run natively on both M1 Macs and Intel-based Macs for the best performance no matter your choice of hardware platform.

It has been a lot of fun to see this release come together at StataCorp, and it is a tremendous pleasure to be able to release it to you.

Just released from Stata Press: Environmental Econometrics Using Stata

Stata Press is pleased to announce the release of Environmental Econometrics Using Stata by Christopher F. Baum and Stan Hurn. Read more…

Just released from Stata Press: Interpreting and Visualizing Regression Models Using Stata, Second Edition

Stata Press is pleased to announce the release of Interpreting and Visualizing Regression Models Using Stata, Second Edition by Michael N. Mitchell.

Mitchell’s latest book is a clear treatment of how to carefully present results from model-fitting in a wide variety of settings. It is a boon to anyone who has to present the tangible meaning of a complex model clearly, regardless of the audience. Read more…

Just released from Stata Press: Data Management Using Stata: A Practical Handbook, Second Edition

Stata Press is pleased to announce the release of Data Management Using Stata: A Practical Handbook, Second Edition by Michael N. Mitchell.

Whether you are a new user needing to import, clean, and prepare data for your first analysis in Stata or you are an experienced user hoping to learn new tricks for the most challenging tasks, this book is for you. You can jump straight to the section of the book that discusses the particular challenge you are facing. There you will find a clear explanation of how to approach the problem and illustrative examples to guide you. Read more…

Just released from Stata Press: Introduction to Time Series Using Stata, Revised Edition

Stata Press is pleased to announce the release of Introduction to Time Series Using Stata, Revised Edition, by Sean Becketti. This edition has been updated for Stata 16 and is available in paperback, eBook, and Kindle format. In this book, Becketti introduces time-series techniques—from simple to complex—and explains how to implement them using Stata. The many worked examples, concise explanations that focus on intuition, and useful tips based on the author’s experience make the book insightful for students, academic researchers, and practitioners in industry and government. Read more…

Stata 16 Released

We just announced the release of Stata 16. It is now available. Click to visit

Stata 16 is a big release, which our releases usually are. This one is broader than usual. It ranges from lasso to Python and from multiple datasets in memory to multiple chains in Bayesian analysis.

The highlights are listed below. If you click on a highlight, we will spirit you away to our website, where we will describe the feature in a dry but information-dense way. Or you can scroll down and read my comments, which I hope are more entertaining even if they are less informative.

The big features of Stata 16 are

  1. Lasso, both for prediction and for inference
  2. Reproducible and automatically updating reports
  3. New meta-analysis suite
  4. Revamped and expanded choice modeling (margins works everywhere)
  5. Integration of Python with Stata
  6. Bayesian predictions, multiple chains, and more
  7. Extended regression models (ERMs) for panel data
  8. Importing of SAS and SPSS datasets
  9. Flexible nonparametric series regression
  10. Multiple datasets in memory, meaning frames
  11. Sample-size analysis for confidence intervals
  12. Nonlinear DSGE models
  13. Multiple-group IRT
  14. Panel-data Heckman-selection models
  15. NLMEs with lags: multiple-dose pharmacokinetic models and more
  16. Heteroskedastic ordered probit
  17. Graph sizes in inches, centimeters, and printer points
  18. Numerical integration in Mata
  19. Linear programming in Mata
  20. Do-file Editor: Autocompletion, syntax highlighting, and more
  21. Stata for Mac: Dark Mode and tabbed windows
  22. Set matsize obviated

Number 22 is not a link because it’s not a highlight. I added it because I suspect it will affect the most Stata users. It may not be enough to make you buy the release, but it will half tempt you. Buy the update, and you will never again have to type

. set matsize 600

And if you do type it, you will be ignored. Stata just works, and it uses less memory.

Oh, and in Stata/MP, Stata matrices can now be up to 65,534 x 65,534, meaning you can fit models with over 65,000 right-hand-side variables. Meanwhile, Mata matrices remain limited only by memory.

Here are my comments on the highlights.

1. Lasso, both for prediction and for inference

There are two parts to our implementation of lasso: prediction and inference. I suspect inference will be of more interest to our users, but we needed prediction to implement inference. By the way, when I say lasso, I mean lasso, elastic net, and square-root lasso, but if you want a features list, click the title.

Let’s start with lasso for prediction. If you type

. lasso linear y x1 x2 x3 ... x999

lasso will select the covariates from the x‘s specified and fit the model on them. lasso will be unlikely to choose the covariates that belong in the true model, but it will choose covariates that are collinear with them, and that works a treat for prediction. If English is not your first language, by “works a treat”, I mean great. Anyway, the lasso command is for prediction, and standard errors for the covariates it selects are not reported because they would be misleading.

Concerning inference, we provide four lasso-based methods: double selection, cross-fit partialing out, and two more. If you type

. dsregress y x1, controls(x2-x999)

then, conceptually but not actually, y will be fit on x1 and the variables lasso selects from x2-x999. That’s not how the calculation is made because the variables lasso selects are not identical to the true variables that belong in the model. I said earlier that they are correlated with the true variables, and they are. Another way to think about selection is that lasso estimates the variables to be selected and, as with all estimation, that is subject to error. Anyway, the inference calculations are robust to those errors. Reported will be the coefficient and its standard error for x1. I specified one variable of special interest in the example, but you can specify however many you wish.

2. Reproducible and automatically updating reports

The inelegant title above is trying to say (1) reports that reproduce themselves just as they were originally and (2) reports that, when run again, update themselves by running the analysis on the latest data. Stata has always been strong on both, and we have added more features. I don’t want to downplay the additions, but neither do I want to discuss them. Click the title to learn about them.

I think what’s important is another aspect of what we did. The real problem was that we never told you how to use the reporting features. Now we do in an all-new manual. We tell you and we show you, with examples and workflows. Here’s a link to the manual so you can judge for yourself.

3. New meta-analysis suite

Stata is known for its community-contributed meta-analysis. Now there is an official StataCorp suite as well. It’s complete and easy to use. And yes, it has funnel plots and forest plots, and bubble plots and L’Abbé plots.

4. Revamped and expanded choice modeling (margins works everywhere)

Choice modeling is jargon for conditional logit, mixed logit, multinomial probit, and other procedures that model the probability of individuals making a particular choice from the alternatives available to each of them.

We added a new command to fit mixed logit models, and we rewrote all the rest. The new commands are easier to use and have new features. Old commands continue to work under version control.

margins can now be used after fitting any choice model. margins answers questions about counterfactuals and can even answer them for any one of the alternatives. You can finally obtain answers to questions like, “How would a $10,000 increase in income affect the probability people take public transportation to work?”

The new commands are easier to use because you must first cmset your data. That may not sound like a simplification, but it simplifies the syntax of the remaining commands because it gets details out of the way. And it has another advantage. It tells Stata what your data should look like so Stata can run consistency checks and flag potential problems.

Finally, we created a new [CM] Choice Modeling Manual. Everything you need to know about choice modeling can now be found in one place.

5. Integration of Python with Stata

If you don’t know what Python is, put down your quill pen, dig out your acoustic modem and plug it in, push your telephone handset firmly into the coupler, and visit Wikipedia. Python has become an exceedingly popular programming language with extensive libraries for writing numerical, machine learning, and web scraping routines.

Stata’s new relationship with Python is the same as its relationship with Mata. You can use it interactively from the Stata prompt, in do-files, and in ado-files. You can even put Python subroutines at the bottom of ado-files, just as you do Mata subroutines. Or put both. Stata’s flexible.

Python can access Stata results and post results back to Stata using the Stata Function Interface (sfi), the Python module that we provide.

6. Bayesian predictions, multiple chains, and more

We have lots of new Bayesian features.

We now have multiple chains. Has the MCMC converged? Estimate models using multiple chains, and reported will be the maximum of Gelman-Rubin convergence diagnostic. If it has not yet converged, do more simulations. Still hasn’t converged? Now you can obtain the Gelman-Rubin convergence diagnostic for each parameter. If the same parameter turns up again and again as the culprit, you know where the problem lies.

We now provide Bayesian predictions for outcomes and functions of them. Bayesian predictions are calculated from the simulations that were run to fit your model, so there are a lot of them. The predictions will be saved in a separate dataset. Once you have the predictions, we provide commands so that you can graph summaries of them and perform hypothesis testing. And you can use them to obtain posterior predictive p-values to check the fit of your model.

There’s more. Click the title.

7. Extended regression models (ERMs) for panel data

ERMs fits models with problems. These problems can be any combination of (1) endogenous and exogenous sample selection, (2) endogenous covariates, also known as unobserved confounders, and (3) nonrandom treatment assignment.

What’s new is that ERMs can now be used to fit models with panel (2-level) data. Random effects are added to each equation. Correlations between the random effects are reported. You can test them, jointly or singly. And you can suppress them, jointly or singly.

Ermistatas got a fourth antenna.

8. Importing of SAS and SPSS datasets

New command import sas imports .sas7bdat data files and .sas7bcat value-label files.

New command import spss imports IBM SPSS version 16 or higher .sav and .zsav files.

I recommend using them from their dialog boxes. You can preview the data and select the variables and observations you want to import.

9. Flexible nonparametric series regression

New command npregress series fits models like

y = g(x1, x2, x3) + ε

No functional-form restrictions are placed on g(), but you can impose separability restrictions. The new command can fit

y = g1(x1) + g2(x2, x3) + ε

y = g1(x1, x2) + g3(x3) + ε

y = g1(x1, x3) + g2(x2) + ε

and even fit

y = b1x1 + g2(x2, x3) + ε

y = b1x1 + b2x2 + g3(x3) + ε

I mentioned that lasso can perform inference in models like

. dsregress y x1, controls(x2-x999)

If you know that variables x12, x19, and x122 appear in the model, but do not know the functional form, you could use npregress series to obtain inference. The command

. npregress series y x12 x19 x122, asis(x1)

y = b1x1 + g2(x12, x19, x122) + ε

and, among other statistics, reports the coefficient and standard error of b1.

10. Multiple datasets in memory, meaning frames

I’m a sucker for data management commands. Even so, I do not think I’m exaggerating when I say that frames will change the way you work. If you are not interested, bear with me. I think I can change your mind.

You can have multiple datasets in memory. Each is stored in a named frame. At any instant, one of the frames is the current frame. Most Stata commands operate on the data in the current frame. It’s the commands that work across frames that will change the way you work, but before you can use them, you have to learn how to use frames. So here’s a bit of me using frames:

. use persons

. frame create counties

. frame counties: use counties

. tabulate cntyid

. frame counties: tabulate cntyid

Well, I’m thinking at this point, it appears I could merge persons.dta with counties.dta, except I’m not thinking about merging them. I’m thinking about linking them.

. frlink m:1 cntyid, frame(counties)

Linking is frame’s equivalent of merge. It does not change either dataset except to add one variable to the data in the current frame. New variable counties is created in this case. If I were to drop the variable, I would eliminate the link, but I’m not going to do that. I’m curious whether the counties in which people reside in persons.dta were all found in counties.dta. I can find out by typing

. count if counties==.

If 1,000 were reported, I would now drop counties, and it would be as if I had never linked the two frames.

Let’s assume count reported 0. Or 4, which is a small enough number that I don’t care for this demonstration. Now watch this:

. generate relinc = income / frget(counties, medinc)

I just calculated each person’s income relative to the median income in the county in which he or she resides, and median income was in the counties dataset, not the persons dataset!

Next, I will copy to the current frame all the variables in counties that start with pop. The command that does this, frget, will use the link and copy the appropriate observations.

. frget pop*, from(counties)

. describe pop*

. generate ln_pop18plus = ln(pop18plus)

. generate ln_income = ln(income)

. correlate ln_income ln_pop18plus

I hope I have convinced you that frames are of interest. If not, this is only one of the five ways frames will change how you work with Stata. Maybe one of the other four ways will convince you. Visit the overview of frames page at

11. Sample-size analysis for confidence intervals

The goal is to optimally allocate study resources when CIs are to be used for inference or, said differently, to estimate the sample size required to achieve the desired precision of a CI in a planned study. One mean, two independent means, or two paired means. Or one variance.

12. Nonlinear DSGE models

DSGE stands for Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium. Stata previously fit linear DSGEs. Now it can fit nonlinear ones too.

I know this either interests you or does not, and if it does not, there will be no changing your mind. It interests me, and what makes the new feature spectacular is how easy models are to specify and how readable the code is afterwards. You could almost teach from it. If this interests you, click through.

13. Multiple-group IRT

IRT (Item Response Theory) is about the relationship between latent traits and the instruments designed to measure them. An IRT analysis might be about scholastic ability (the latent trait) and a college admission test (the instrument).

Stata 16’s new IRT features produce results for data containing different groups of people. Do instruments measure latent traits in the same way for different populations?

Here is an example. Do students in urban and rural schools perform differently on a test intended to measure mathematical ability? Using Stata 16, you can fit a 2-parameter logistic model comparing the groups by typing

. irt 2pl item1-item10, group(urbanrural)

What’s new is the group() option.

Does an instrument measuring depression perform the same today as it did five years ago? You can fit a graded-response model that compares the groups by typing

. irt grm item-item10, group(timecategory)

And IRT’s postestimation graphs have been updated to reveal the differences among groups when a group() model has been fit.

The examples I mentioned both concerned two groups, but IRT can handle any number of them.

14. Panel-data Heckman-selection models

Heckman selection adjusts for bias when some outcomes are missing not at random.

The classic example is economists’ modeling of wages. Wages are observed only for those who work, and whether you work is unlikely to be random. Think about it. Should I work or go to school? Should I work or live off my meager savings? Should I work or retire? Few people would be willing to make those decisions by flipping a coin.

If you worry about such problems and are using panel data, the new xtheckman command is the solution.

15-21. Seven more new features

I will summarize the last seven features briefly. My briefness makes them no less important, especially if they interest you.

15. NLMEs with lags: multiple-dose pharmacokinetic models and more can now be fit by Stata’s menl command for fitting nonlinear mixed-effects regression. This includes fitting multiple-dose models.

16. Heteroskedastic ordered probit joins the ordered probit models that Stata already could fit.

17. Graph sizes in inches, centimeters, and printer points can now be specified. Specify 1in, 1.4cm, or 12pt.

18. Programmers: Mata’s new Quadrature class numerically integrates y = f(x) over the interval a to b, where a may be -∞ or finite and b may be finite or +∞.

19. Programmers: Mata’s new Linear programming class solves linear programs using an interior-point method. It minimizes or maximizes a linear objective function subject to linear constraints (equality and inequality) and boundary conditions.

20. Do-file Editor: Autocompletion and more. The editor now provides syntax highlighting for Python and Markdown. And it autocompletes Stata commands, quotes, parentheses, braces, and brackets. Last but not least, spaces as well as tabs can be used for indentation.

21. Stata for Mac: Dark Mode and tabbed windows. Dark mode is a color scheme that darkens background windows and controls so that they do not cause eye strain or distract from what you are working on. Stata now supports it. Meanwhile, tabbed windows conserve screen real estate. Stata has lots of windows. With the exception of the Results window, they come and go as they are needed. Now you can combine all or some into one. Click the tab, change the window.

That’s it

The highlights are 58% of what’s new in Stata 16, measured by the number of text lines required to describe them. Here is a sampling of what else is new.

  • ranksum has new option exact to specify that exact p-values be computed for the Wilcoxon rank-sum test.
  • New setting set iterlog controls whether estimation commands display iteration logs.
  • menl has new option lrtest that reports a likelihood-ratio test comparing the nonlinear mixed-effects model with the model fit by ordinary nonlinear regression.
  • The bayes: prefix command now supports the new hetoprobit command so that you can fit Bayesian heteroskedastic ordered probits.
  • The svy: prefix works with more estimation commands, namely, existing command hetoprobit and new commands cmmixlogit and cmxtmixlogit.
  • New command export sasxport8 exports datasets to SAS XPORT Version 8 Transport format.
  • New command splitsample splits data into random samples. It can create simple random samples, clustered samples, and balanced random samples. Balance splitting can be used for matched-treatment assignment.

I could go on. Type help whatsnew15to16 when you get your copy of Stata 16 to find out all that’s new.

I hope you enjoy Stata 16.

The book that Stata programmers have been waiting for

“The book that Stata programmers have been waiting for” is how the Stata Press describes my new book on Mata, the full title of which is

The Mata Book: A Book for Serious Programmers and Those Who Want to Be

The Stata Press took its cue from me in claiming that it this the book you have been waiting for, although I was less presumptuous in the introduction:

This book is for you if you have tried to learn Mata by reading the Mata Reference Manual and failed. You are not alone. Though the manual describes the parts of Mata, it never gets around to telling you what Mata is, what is special about Mata, what you might do with Mata, or even how Mata’s parts fit together. This book does that.

I’m excited about the book, but for a while I despaired of ever completing it. I started and stopped four times. I stopped because the drafts were boring. Read more…

Stata 15 announced, available now

We announced Stata 15 today. It’s a big deal because this is Stata’s biggest release ever.

I posted to Statalist this morning and listed sixteen of the most important new features. Here on the blog I will say more about them, and you can learn even more by visiting our website and seeing the Stata 15 features page.

I go into depth below on the sixteen highlighted features. They are (click to jump)

Read more…


text:
Camp Jabulani – Review of Elephant Experience

Press Release from Camp Jabulani – 31 May 2016

The time has come to review The Elephant Experience at Camp Jabulani, and a decision has been taken to completely phase out elephant-back safaris. By 1 April 2017, The Elephant Experience at Camp Jabulani will no longer include elephant rides.

The increasing international pressure against elephant-back safaris, because of the abusive way in which a proportion of the animals are sadly trained, prompted this decision.  Based on our approach to animal welfare issues, we are in agreement with the negative sentiments relevant to abusive methods of training.

It is important, at this point, to understand the origin of the Camp Jabulani elephant herd. Twelve elephants, all of which had been left orphaned after culling operations in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, were trained for elephant-back safaris on a commercial farm in Zimbabwe from which they were rescued in 2002 at the time of a highly unstable political situation in the country. At the expense of the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre (HESC), a massive rescue operation was planned in a matter of days, and all twelve elephants were relocated to South Africa. Stables were built in record time (the cost of which was also covered by HESC), and the elephants were moved into their new home. The groomsmen who took care of them in Zimbabwe were also relocated, and their jobs kept secure as they once again became the elephants’ primary caregivers. We built Camp Jabulani, and structured its unique offering around the elephants in order to sustain them and keep them alive. The elephant-back safaris were put in place as a continuation of what they had been trained to do in Zimbabwe. From the beginning we worked closely with an advisory committee of veterinary specialists who guided us in respect of training the elephants, sustaining their emotional and physical wellbeing, and assessing which of the animals were to be used for elephant-back safaris (only six of the herd of fourteen participate in the safaris).

The well being of the Camp Jabulani elephant herd has always been at the forefront of the operation. Those who have visited us will know that our elephants spend most of their day in the open on the Big Five Kapama Private Game Reserve under the close supervision of the grooms (letting them roam free would invite the risk of potential conflict with wild elephant herds on the reserve). We have tried to provide an environment as close to a natural one as possible, without forgetting the very real captive circumstances surrounding their upbringing which have defined them.

Our model of training has always been based on positive re-enforcement, and no animal in our care has ever been physically or spiritually abused in any way. We abhor any practice that removes an animal from the wild for the purpose of commercial gain, as well as the harmful treatment of any living being. We are thankful that the world is acquiring a greater respect for the animal kingdom, and we pledge our support in being part of the changes that we all wish to see.

We have walked a long road with these elephants. As with anything in life, it is not about the destination, but about the journey.  As with life, we need to be flexible during times of change. We will adapt our management plan to phase out elephant-back rides during the course of the next year, but will retain other forms of interaction with the elephants to create public awareness of the plight of these animals – particularly where and when they have to be sustained in captivity.  Looking after this group of elephants was a responsibility that we accepted from the very beginning, and it is a commitment that we have no intention of forfeiting.

The Elephant Experience will evolve into an interactive and observational one, where visitors will have the opportunity to meet the elephants as well as view them in close proximity, learning more about their behavior, their unique character traits, their incredible story, and what is takes to take care of a herd of this size. Much of this will take place while the elephants are in their natural environment, foraging in the bush, walking through the reserve or swimming in the waterhole. Photographic opportunities in close proximity of the elephants will also be afforded.
Important note regarding bookings:

  • Effective immediately, elephant back safaris will no longer be actively promoted or sold by Camp Jabulani. All collateral will be updated, including the website, fact sheets and new brochure.
  • We will honour existing reservations, until 31 March 2017, as well as bookings that were confirmed as a result of current brochure inclusions. However, from 1 April 2017, no elephant-back safaris will be offered at all and agents will need to inform their clients of what The Elephant Experience will entail from then on.
  • Effective 1 April 2017, we will no longer offer a partially inclusive rate. Every booking confirmed will include The Elephant Experience, which can broadly be defined as:
    • An introduction to the Camp Jabulani herd and the grooms who have taken care of the elephants over the years
    • The opportunity to watch the elephants in their natural habitat during the day or at their stables early morning/ late afternoon and into the evening
    • Photographic opportunities in close proximity with the elephants, in the company of their grooms
    • Game drives and guided bush walks on the Kapama Big 5 Reserve, getting close to the elephant herd to observe them in the wild

Please note: As the nature of the Elephant Experience will be determined by the unpredictable free-ranging movement of the elephant herd, there will be a degree of flexibility in the itinerary.

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text:
Igbo names and spellings for various settlements
Abakaliki is Abankaleke; Afikpo is Ehugbo; Awgu is Ogu; Awka is Oka; Bonny is Ubani; Enugu is Enugwu; Ibusa is Igbuzö; Igrita is Igwuruta; Oguta is Ugwuta; Onitsha is Onicha; Owerri is Owere; Oyigbo is Obigbo... any more will be added.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Obugulu mau masquerade. A close up view of the masquerader wearing a white and black painted face mask adorned with an elaborate superstructure. The top of the mask consists of pieces of cloth, ribbon, felt. tassels, carvings, and mirrors. The costume is harlequin like appliques material.
— G. I . Jones. 1930s. Igbo peoples, Nigeria.
Location: Onicha, Alaigbo | Date: 1960s | Credit: Dmochowski


text:
Change Planes. Connect time in Anchorage, AK (ANC) is 1 hr.

  • New York, NY (JFK) to Houston, TX (IAH – Intercontinental) on Sat., Nov. 10, 2007
  • Houston, TX (IAH – Intercontinental) to Seattle, WA (SEA) on Sat., Nov. 10, 2007
  • Seattle, WA (SEA) to Anchorage, AK (ANC) on Sat., Nov. 10, 2007
  • Anchorage, AK (ANC) to Seattle, WA (SEA) on Sun., Nov. 11, 2007
  • Seattle, WA (SEA) to Houston, TX (IAH – Intercontinental) on Sun., Nov. 11, 2007
  • Houston, TX (IAH – Intercontinental) to New York, NY (JFK) on Sun., Nov. 11, 2007

In the world of the mileage obsessed, there is the concept of a mileage run. This involves going to the airport and getting on a plane (or series of planes) and just flying somewhere, only to turn around and come straight back. There is no reason to take these trips, other than for a love of flying and for the collection of miles. And status. For the frequent flier, the idea of status is the icing on the cake, the benefit that makes all the effort worthwhile. It is completely irrational, and yet the number of people doing it is higher than you might think (which is to say more than just me). Sometimes it is driven by the fare, like a $1.78 fare to Watertown, NY from anywhere USAir flies. Sometimes it is driven by the destination or the aircraft flying the route (lots of folks spent a LOT of money to fly on the A380 initial flights SIN-SYD-SIN). In my case, it is the search for status.

All the airlines have levels of status, and the higher one is on the food chain, the better the service and, more importantly, the greater the chances for upgrades. So keeping that top tier of status is a worthy goal, especially if there is an expectation of further high volumes of travel where those benefits will come in handy. And the difference between the levels is notable. A platinum flier on a $68 fare from NYC to Orlando will get the upgrade above the gold on a $200 fare on the same plane – life isn’t fair sometimes. So when the end of the year rolls around, there are folks working on topping off their accounts, making sure that they have the miles they need for that last status bump.

And so it is that I find myself flying to Anchorage, Alaska for an hour this weekend. I won’t leave the airport (or any other of the airports I’ll be transiting for the 36 hours I’m on the road). I’ll eat a lot of airline food. I’ll desperately try to actually sleep a little on some of the planes. And I’m going to read. A lot. I’ll top off my account for platinum status for next year (and my co-worker flying with me will make his silver status with this trip). I’ll earn almost enough miles for a free ticket (20K+ miles!!). And I’m going to have a pretty good time along the way. Certainly the fact that I’m flying in first class on the IAH-SEA-ANC-SEA-IAH part of the trip doesn’t hurt the comfort factor of the trip.

And so now pretty much everyone out there thinks I’m crazy. Consider this, however. A 36 hour trip is a quick one, and I’m not leaving the country. It isn’t uncommon to read of 72 hour trips to Singapore or Bangkok, with only 10-20 hours on the ground. Maybe next year….

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Seth Miller

I'm Seth, also known as the Wandering Aramean. I was bit by the travel bug 30 years ago and there's no sign of a cure. I fly ~200,000 miles annually; these are my stories. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.