R help - Aug 2013 - Lack of catalog number referencing for statistical objects

Hi,

In "Skew-t fits to mortality data - can a Gaussian-related distribution
replace the Gompertz-Makeham as the basis for mortality studies?" (J
Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2013 August ;68(8):903-913;
doi:10.1093/Gerona/gls239) Clark et al compares the fit of several distributions
to mortality data (using the bbmle package, among others).

This is not the place to comment on the paper, of course. Just wanted to share
with you the following quote (p. 906) -almost a throwaway remark given the
context of the paper- which may be of interest to the statisticians in the
forum:

"[T]here was a lack of catalogue number referencing for statistical
objects. Attempts at cataloguing are under way (eg the Digital Library of
Mathematical Functions), but the present lack of number referencing could be
contrasted with, for example, that for genes, genomes, single-nucleotide
polymorphisms or proteins. This has, seemingly, led in some cases to poor
characterisation: for example... the AIC is calculated differently in packages
bbmle and gamlss". And then they provide one suggestion for cataloguing.

An obvious question to the forum is how come the AIC is calculated differently
depending on the package, but I wanted to highlight this need for cataloguing
statistical objects akin to genes, proteins, etc.

Kind regards,

José

Prof. José Iparraguirre
Chief Economist
Age UK

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