(Updated May 5, 2017)
The eleventh annual SEM The Musical was held Thursday, May 4, during our class. We had two new songs this year, one by Dr. Reifman and one by student Derrick Holland. Derrick's song keeps our streak alive of having at least one student-written song every year. We also, of course, sang a bunch of favorites from the previous ten musicals (links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). See below for this year's new songs...
Why Won’t It Run?
Lyrics by Alan Reifman
May be sung to the tune of “On the Run” (Lukather/Paich/Waybill for Toto)
SEM involves, some complex math,
Before you go, you need to check, you’ve added each path,
Lots of little details, for you to keep in sight,
Formatting the data, and making sure, your syntax is right,
Have you verified, what you’ll fix to one?
Otherwise, your troubles, have just begun,
Why won’t it run, why all these error signs?
Why won’t it run? Only hints, of what could’ve, gone wrong,
Why won’t it run? Check your steps, line-by-line,
You can put, all your angst, into song!
(Instrumental)
You never know, what a new model, can bring,
Punctuation, constraints, it could be anything,
Maybe what you have, is a Heywood Case?
You’ll need a sharp eye, to keep things in place,
Maximum likelihood, seeks a minimum to achieve,
Gonna take a miracle, for you to receive,
Oh, oh, oh, why won’t it run, why won’t the steps converge?
Why won’t it run, are the magnitude scales far apart?
Why won’t it run, when will I be, on the verge?
Doing this, can tax your heart!
(Instrumental and Guitar Solo)
Hungry Like a Low Chi-Square
Lyrics by Derrick Holland
May be sung to the tune of "Hungry Like a Wolf" (Duran Duran)
Open the connection, get ready to run,
Make sure variables, are in a dot-dat file,
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo,
List, all your variables, that you will use,
Make sure all missing variables, are -99*,
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo,
All pathways are free,
Unless you fix a path to 1,
The very end goal,
It’s important you know,
And I'm hungry, like a low chi-square,
Straddle the line,
With comparative models,
I'm on the hunt, for a good CFI,
Check your TLI, and RMSEA,
And I'm hungry, like a low chi-square,
You get an error, so you start to freak out,
Mplus tells you, that variables are not defined,
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo,
You get a low CFI, important paths are behind,
You search in theory, for paths that are not benign,
Do do do do do do do dodo dododo dodo,
All pathways are free,
Unless you fix one path to 1,
The very end goal,
It’s important you know,
And I'm hungry, like a low chi-square,
Straddle the line,
With comparative models,
I'm on the hunt, for a good CFI,
Check your TLI, and RMSEA,
And I'm hungry, like a low chi-square,
Searching for paths,
I break from theory,
I'm on the hunt,
But I won’t get pubbed,
Latent constructs, made up of manifest
And I'm hungry like low chi-squares,
Draw many lines,
If you use ONYX,
I'm on the hunt, for a good CFI,
Check your TLI, and RMSEA,
And I'm hungry, like a low chi-square,
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*This is a specification in the Mplus program
