SSCC News

SSCC Training The SSCC’s fall training schedule is now available. We’d like to particularly draw the attention of new graduate students to the “Introduction to…” and “Data Wrangling in…” workshops in Stata, R, and Python, as these workshops are designed for you! You should take an “Introduction to…” workshop if you: Will be taking a quantitative methods class that uses statistical software you haven’t used before Don’t feel like you really understand the statistical software you use Plan to take an SSCC “Data Wrangling in…” workshop (unless you’re very confident you don’t need it) You should take a “Data Wrangling in…” workshop if you plan to do quantitative research and you have never taken a class that spent a significant amount of time on preparing real-world data for analysis. For example, you should be able to do the following quickly and easily using reproducible code: Given a categorical “education” variable with a large number of very specific categories, combine them into a small number of broader categories Given a data set of individuals grouped into households, calculate the household incomes and create an indicator variable for “this household has children” Given a data set of individuals and a data set …

Summer Training Schedule The SSCC’s summer training schedule is still available and the fall training schedule will be posted soon. As always it will include data wrangling classes in R, Stata, and Python and our regular workshop on regression diagnostics. Summer is a great time to fill in any gaps in your skillset, and data wrangling and regression diagnostics are two topics our statistical consultants see a lot. It’s also a great time to learn to use the Slurm cluster! Monthly Downtimes for Various SSCC Services Starting in June, our shared NVivo project server and our remote desktop gateway (for remotely connecting to your office computer without VPN) will be rebooted monthly during the usual SSCC downtime, which is 6-8 am on the Wednesday after the 3rd Tuesday of the month.  All of the services impacted by the monthly downtime are: Winstat Linstat WinSilo LinSilo NVivo project server Remote desktop gateway Slurm nodes are exempt from this list and are taken down for maintenance when not in use. SSCC Account Renewal The Social Science Computing Cooperative carries out an annual account exercise to keep our account list up to date.  To renew your account, you should have received an email with …

Slurm Update Usage of the SSCC Slurm cluster is growing rapidly: Slurm did more computing in February than Linstat ever has in a single month. But there’s still plenty of room for SSCC researchers to think bigger. Slurm users should not hesitate to put unused capacity to work. If your job will run faster with 128 cores, use 128 cores. If your job can use 20 servers, use 20 servers. If you aren’t using Slurm yet, think about how more computing power could enhance your research. Whether that means running models faster, converting tasks that run sequentially into tasks that all run at the same time, using bigger data sets, running bigger simulations, or something else entirely, we’ll be happy to help you see what Slurm can do for you. Just sign up for a workshop on running big jobs in general or Slurm in particular, set up an appointment with one of the SSCC’s statistical consultants, or read the new Guide to Research Computing at the SSCC. To make submitting jobs to Slurm even easier, we’ve created a Slurm Assistant to help. Just fill out a simple web form describing your job, and it will craft the ssubmit (Slurm …

Major Expansion of SSCC’s Computing Resources We are thrilled to announce that the SSCC will soon be able to more than triple the amount of computing power available to SSCC researchers, thanks to a Research Core Revitalization Program grant from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education and additional funding from the Department of Economics and the Wisconsin School of Business. We’ll also be adding powerful GPU servers. The new servers will be made available in the SSCC’s Slurm cluster, where they can be used most efficiently, and may be available as soon as this year’s holiday season (barring supply chain issues). We encourage all SSCC researchers to ask themselves “What new things can I do because of this new computing power?” We are committed to making large-scale computing as accessible and easy to use as possible. That includes installing easy to use tools like RStudio Server and JupyterLab, teaching multiple workshops on how to use the SSCC’s computing resources, and creating a new Guide to Research Computing at the SSCC. The SSCC’s Statistical Consultants will be happy to answer questions and help you navigate using the new servers. Please don’t let the idea of using Linux servers …

Summer and Early Fall Training The SSCC’s summer training is well underway, but we still have upcoming classes in Python, web scraping, regression and regression diagnostics taught in both Stata and R, and running big research computing jobs. Visit the training page for details and to register. Then in late August, just before the fall semester begins, we will teach another round of Stata, R, and Python classes. All are welcome, but these are especially valuable to new graduate students. If you are in touch with incoming graduate students, please make sure they know about these classes before it’s too late for them to arrange their schedules so that they can attend! Account Renewal Deadline Accounts that were not renewed during the renewal period will be disabled shortly. However, if you’re still at UW-Madison it is not too late to renew your account. SSCC Members should fill out the account renewal form. Drop-in users should email the Help Desk. You’ll know you need to renew your account if you suddenly can’t log in.  New Data Storage Hardware The SSCC recently purchased new data storage hardware, as our old storage was both out of space and reaching the end of its expected life. …

Introducing Slurm We are very excited to announce the launch of a pilot Slurm cluster at the SSCC. Slurm (Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management) is a powerful system for managing and scheduling computing jobs that is very popular at large-scale research computing centers. The SSCC is currently running a pilot with a small Slurm cluster as we all learn more about it, but we anticipate that it will become the main way SSCC researchers run large research computing jobs. The easy way to submit a job to Slurm is to log into Linstat and use the ssubmit command. For example: ssubmit –cores=32 –mem=20g “stata -b do my_do_file” Slurm will then find a server in the Slurm cluster that has 32 cores and 20GB of memory available, and run your Stata do file there. It’s possible your job might have to wait until those resources are free, but once it starts it is guaranteed exclusive use of them—no more having your job slow down or run out of memory because the server is busy. If you’re not sure how many cores and how much memory your job uses, Identifying the Computing Resources Used by a Linux Job will show you …

Winter Tech Update The SSCC implemented our Winter Tech update on 1/8/2022.  Alongside the usual updates for all of our servers and software, we are excited to announce that the web version of Visual Studio Code (VSCode) is now available on Winstat.  VSCode is a very popular editor for writing source code in many languages. SSCC VPN to Require Duo Authentication Starting this February, the SSCC will require the use of multifactor authentication (MFA) via Duo to access the SSCC network via VPN. Duo is the same MFA system you use for your NetID. Computers on VPN have direct access to SSCC resources, bypassing some security measures, so it’s important only authorized users be able to use it. We encourage you to set up your SSCC account in Duo now, so you’ll be ready to go when it becomes a requirement in February. You can do so at the SSCC’s Duo MFA portal. If you use Silo, you have already set up Duo and do not have to do so for VPN. More details will be announced before the change is implemented. Export Data from Silo Using Globus As of Wednesday, January 19th, Globus users will be able to export data …

Paul Boyer Leaving the SSCC We’re sad to announce that Paul Boyer, who has served the SSCC as one of our PC Support staff, is leaving at the end of November. Paul is taking the next step in his career by joining his alma mater, the Wisconsin School of Business, as a Windows System Administrator. Paul will be sorely missed, but we are thrilled for him to continue his career path to new horizons. With Paul’s departure, Cody Gerhartz will certainly be busy, but we are looking to hire a replacement for Paul as quickly as possible.  While we do our best to provide excellent service to our members, members may encounter some delays in response times. Need to Learn Statistical Software? Being able to manage and analyze data is essential for a quantitative social science researcher, but necessary statistical software and data wrangling skills are rarely taught in official classes. SSCC’s statistical consultants went through the pain of figuring all that out on our own and we don’t think you should have to. If you need to learn Stata, R, or Python, you can start today by working through our online training. We’ll also be teaching all three the …

Welcome, New Members! We want to extend a warm welcome to all the new members of the Social Science Computing Cooperative, whether you’re a new faculty member, staff member, or graduate student who will use our resources for research, or an undergraduate taking a class that uses SSCC resources. What is the SSCC? The SSCC provides servers, software, training, and consulting to support researchers (and future researchers) who do statistical analysis. If you didn’t attend an orientation session, feel free to email the SSCC Help Desk, tell us about yourself, and ask what we can do for you. What is SSCC News? SSCC News is one of our main ways of getting information to our members. It comes out about once every two months. Please look over the email when you get it and then read the articles that will affect you. If you’d rather not receive SSCC News, email helpdesk@ssc.wisc.edu and they can take care of that for you. If you’re no longer interested in SSCC News because you no longer use your SSCC account, they can close it for you. SSCC Fall Training SSCC’s fall training is underway, but it’s not too late to learn Stata or R, …