Post 2: Introduce a Professional Journal in Statistics

I believe that most students are familiar with professional journal and magazine. Reading journal or magazine could increase professional knowledge and learn more news about particular field. For myself, I read a journal named “Variational Inference of Linear Regression with Nonzero Prior Means” in NDSU library database recently.

This is a professional journal in statistics field which is my major. It consists with abstract, introduction, the linear regression model, variational inference of the linear model, simulations and conclusions. The important thing worth to mention that this journal is not really difficult to reading, I think some beginners of statistic also could understand this journal. Now I am going to introduce this interesting journal from the advantages and disadvantages.

Bayesian method and linear regression are the key word for this journal, the model used in article is based on regression theorem. So even I said this journal is not very difficult, the readers still need to know what is the basic meaning of Bayes and linear regression before start reading.

This journal has many strong points. First of all, the vocabularies could easily be understood for students especially undergraduate students. In the previous time, vocabularies are not familiar with students in some of journals I read is common. That means you have to read and check a lot of additional material to support your reading. Reading other supporting books while reading one journal makes me feel incoherent and I don’t like that. I think you also don’t like that, do you? Secondly, graphs are important in science professional journal and this journal did very well in this aspect. In the simulation part, the authors used graphs to compare the efficiency of VLR-NZE and VLR, the PD and FDR performance of VLR-NZE and VLR and the performance of VLR-NZE and VLR. Part of prior mean of the nonzero coefficients in models are known. You may feel confused when I talk about these compare performance, but you could easily understand the meaning of this model and conclusion with graphs in this journal. Lastly, the logic in this journal are strict and the structure is rigorous. The writers explain the problem first, then they explain the solution and conclusion step by step. I think this is significant important in any science professional journal.

I recommend this journal to everyone who interesting in statistics field, however, it still have some disadvantages. I think the supporting quotations is too much. I know and understand professional journal need use quotations, but the number of quotation in this journal is too much. This makes me tired and whiny when I read it.

All in all, I have to say I really like this journal. If you want to read some professional journal in statistics, I recommend this one to you. Here is the like of this journal.  I am sure you will like it! Thanks for reading, enjoy the professional journal.

Journal Link:

http://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.lib.ndsu.nodak.edu/doi/full/10.1080/03610918.2014.895835