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The gateway between this list and the sci.stat.edu newsgroup will
be disabled on June 9. This list will be discontinued on June 21.
Subscribe to the new list EDSTAT-L at Penn State using the web
interface at http://lists.psu.edu/archives/edstat-l.html.
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As you probably know, the gateway between EdStat and the Usenet
newsgroup sci.stat.edu was disabled on June 9. Therefore, mes-
sages sent only to sci.stat.edu will no longer appear in EdStat,
and vice versa. Therefore, because sci.stat.edu tends to carry
many more messages than EdStat, because other newsgroups of in-
terest to you may be available (see below), and because news-
groups are easy to use, you may wish to try out sci.stat.edu.
The next section of this message gives some brief general infor-
mation about Usenet newsgroups. The three sections after that
give instructions for using sci.stat.edu and other newsgroups.
GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT USENET NEWSGROUPS
The Internet has more than 30,000 active Usenet newsgroups, each
devoted to discussion of a particular topic. Any person in the
world with Internet access can read messages in the newsgroups
and (with the exception of "moderated" newsgroups) any person can
post messages to them.
For example, if you're interested in statistics education, you
can read and post to sci.stat.edu. Or if you're interested in
Peugeot automobiles, you can read and post to alt.autos.peugeot.
Or if you're interested in movies, you can read and post to one
of the several rec.arts.movies groups.
Unlike e-mail lists, all newsgroups work the same way in terms of
access, subscribing, and unsubscribing. So if you've learned how
to use one, you know how to use them all.
Each newsgroup is carefully named to reflect its topic. If
you're looking for a newsgroup on a particular topic (e.g., on
statistics), you can easily search the names of the available
newsgroups for relevant strings (which are often abbreviated, as
in "stat"). More on this below.
Before you post messages to a newsgroup it's helpful to become
familiar with the group's etiquette and conventions by reading
other messages posted to the group. Also, good general discus-
sions about newsgroup etiquette are available at
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/soc-sci/netiquette.html
and
http://groups.google.com/googlegroups/posting_style.html
As with e-mail, newsgroups sometimes carry spam, but the amount
of spam is generally small, and the operation of newsgroups makes
the spam easy to ignore. Also, as with e-mail, it's helpful to
practice safe computing when using newsgroups. Some guidelines
for both newsgroups and e-mail are
- Don't open message attachments unless you're completely sure
they're safe because attachments often contain viruses.
- Install anti-virus software on your computer and keep the soft-
ware and the virus definitions for the software up to date.
- Keep your operating system software and application software up
to date with all the relevant security patches.
ACCESS METHOD 1: NEWSREADER SOFTWARE
This method for accessing newsgroups takes slightly longer to set
up than method 2. However, once this method is set up most peo-
ple find it's more efficient because it uses (readily available)
software that's specifically designed for accessing newsgroups.
Here are steps for accessing sci.stat.edu and other newsgroups
using method 1:
1. (Optional) Print these steps for use as a checklist.
2. Contact the technical support department of your Internet ser-
vice provider (ISP) and ask them for the name of the local
"news server". This will be something like "news.abc.edu".
(If your ISP doesn't have an acceptable news server, you can
find an independent news provider [some of which provide free
service] by searching the web for "Usenet news server" without
the quotation marks.)
3. Choose the newsreader software you wish to use. Most web
browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator) have
good newsreader software built in so you may already have good
software on your computer. If not, search the web for
"newsreader software" without the quotation marks and then
download and install your software of choice.
(If you would like to minimize your Internet connection time
over a dial-up telephone line, a good Windows newsreader is
Agent and its free version, Free Agent. It's available at
http://www.forteinc.com/agent/index.php )
4. Start the newsreader software.
(To start the newsreader software that's built into Internet
Explorer, start Internet Explorer and then select Tools, Mail
and News, Read News, which starts Outlook Express in "news-
reader mode".)
5. Configure the newsreader software with the name of the news
server you obtained above in step 2. The software may auto-
matically assist you to perform this step as soon as it first
starts.
(To manually configure Outlook Express, select Tools, Ac-
counts, Add, News and follow the instructions. For instruc-
tions about how to do this step and later steps with other
newsreader software, see the software's help system.)
6. Ask the newsreader software to obtain a list of the names of
all the available newsgroups from the news server. (Some
newsreader software will do this automatically on the first
connection.) This one-time operation may take a few minutes
if you have a slow Internet connection.
(To obtain the newsgroup names in Outlook Express, select
Tools, Newsgroups, Reset List.)
7. Subscribe the newsreader software to sci.stat.edu. You can
also subscribe to as many other newsgroups as you wish in this
step. The software will automatically remember your subscrip-
tion(s) across re-starts of your computer.
(To subscribe to sci.stat.edu in Outlook Express select Tools,
Newsgroups and type "sci.stat.edu" without the quotation marks
in the "Display Newsgroups ..." field. Then click on the
"Subscribe" button and then click on the "OK" button.)
8. Many people who use newsgroups perform this step once a day:
Ask the newsreader software to download all the new messages
from the news server for your subscribed newsgroup(s). For
sci.stat.edu this generally takes only a second or two on any
but the slowest Internet connection. (The very first download
will take longer because several hundred messages may be
available on the server.) After downloading the messages most
newsreader software will display (for one newsgroup at a time)
summary information for all the new messages including the
message subject, author name, submission date, and message
length. You can then click on each message of interest to see
its contents.
(To get new messages in Outlook Express, click on the name of
your news SERVER in the left pane and then select Tools, Syn-
chronize Account. Also, in Outlook Express once you've re-
viewed the messages of interest in a newsgroup you can mark
ALL the downloaded messages for the newsgroup as having been
seen by selecting Edit, Catch Up.)
(If you would like to minimize your Internet connection time,
some software [e.g., Agent and Free Agent] can be can be con-
figured to get only the "headers" for the new messages, in-
cluding the author name, subject, and message length, but ex-
cluding the message "body". After doing this the software
will automatically disconnect from the Internet. Then you can
study the headers for potentially interesting messages and in-
dicate to the software which message bodies you would like to
see. When you've finished selecting interesting messages you
can ask the software to connect to the server a second time to
get the bodies of the selected messages.)
9. Browse the menus and the help material of the newsreader soft-
ware for further information about the software, such as how
to reply to a message, how to send a new message, and how to
search for a string in the names of the available newsgroups.
(These are all easy to do in modern newsreader software.)
Also, you can configure most newsreader software so that it
doesn't display messages that you've already seen.
(To configure Outlook Express to display new messages only,
click on the name of the news SERVER in the left pane and then
ensure that the box "New messages only" is checked for the
relevant newsgroup[s] in the right pane.)
ACCESS METHOD 2: GOOGLE GROUPS
This method for accessing newsgroups is easier to set up, but
(for many people) less convenient to use. Here are steps for ac-
cessing sci.stat.edu and other newsgroups using method 2:
1. Point your web browser to
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=sci.stat.edu
(If you would like to access another newsgroup, you can use
the above link but substitute the name of the group in place
of "sci.stat.edu".)
2. As soon as the web page appears, add it to the "favorites" or
"bookmarks" in your browser to make it easy to return to the
page with a single mouse click.
(To add the web page you are currently viewing to your favor-
ites in Internet Explorer, select Favorites, Add to Favorites.
To view the list of your current favorites, select View, Ex-
plorer Bar, Favorites. To delete an unwanted favorite, right-
click on it and select "Delete" from the menu.)
3. Click on the Preferences link at the top right of the web page
and set your Google global preferences. (These will be remem-
bered only if you have enabled "cookies" in your web browser.)
In setting the preferences you may wish to change the "Number
of Results" from 10 to a larger number (e.g., 50) so that more
"threads" will appear on the page. (But this will mean that
the page will take slightly longer to appear on your screen if
you have a slow Internet connection.) After setting your
preferences, click on "Save Preferences".
4. You can read the messages in a "thread" by clicking on the
subject of the thread in the column "Thread Subject".
5. For more information about how newsgroups work in Google,
click on the Advanced Groups Search link at the top right of
the page and then click on the Groups Help link, also at the
top right.
OTHER STATISTICS-RELATED NEWSGROUPS
Here are the names of some other statistics-related newsgroups:
- sci.stat.math
- sci.stat.consult
- comp.soft-sys.sas
- comp.soft-sys.spss
- comp.soft-sys.stat.spss
- comp.soft-sys.stat.systat
- alt.sci.math.statistics.prediction
Happy reading,
Don Macnaughton
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Donald B. Macnaughton MatStat Research Consulting Inc
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Toronto, Canada
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