There�s a service available to academics that sends you email when certain journals come out with new issues. You pick your favorite journals from a list and the service sends you the index of each issue as it occurs. I find it particularly useful for keeping tabs on fields that intersect with my work, but aren�t actually the one I�m getting my degree in.

When I set up this service for myself, I was working on a portion of my data that required statistical analysis. I have never had a stats class (and boy am I regretting THAT), but the basic issues seem to be based on common sense and I haven�t had too much trouble with procedure in practice. The language, however, is another matter.

I recently received the announcement for the latest issue of Statistics: A Journal of Theoretical and Applied Statistics, which I clearly signed up for having no idea what it was actually about. I still don�t know, as may be demonstrated by the table of contents of volume 37, number 6 (November-December 2003):

On weak consistency in linear models with equi-correlated random errors (by Xinwei Jia, M. Bhaskara Rao, Haimeng Zhang)

Functional sliced inverse regression analysis (by L. Ferr�, A. F. Yao)

A note on the bias and consistency of the jackknife variance estimator in stratified samples (by M. Bloznelis)

On a test for exponentiality against Laplace order dominance (by B. Klar)

Estimation of the parameters of the Gompertz distribution under the first failure-censored sampling plan (by Jong-Wuu Wu, Wen-Liang Hung, Chih-Hui Tsai)

Bayesian one-sample prediction of future observations under Pareto distribution (by A. M. Nigm, Essam K. Al-Hussaini, Zeinhum F. Jaheen)

Matrix variate Cauchy distribution (by Rajesh R. Bandekar, Daya K. Nagar)

If anyone (rs536-2000 perhaps?) can explain any one of these titles to me, I would be grateful. It makes me crazy when I can�t figure things out myself. Even if it�s something I don�t really need to know.

Yes, I'm a model of self-sufficiency today. That would explain why I'm lying in bed again while my husband periodically brings me cold washcloths for my aching head and hot tea for the rest of me. Ms. Independence. That's me.

0 people said it like they meant it