dexter is 1!

Ivailo Partchev

2018-02-09

Today is exactly a year since we presented our R package, dexter, for the first time at the 2017 Psychoco workshop in Vienna. Having partaken of the birthday cake , I (Ivailo) now concentrate on this year’s edition of Psychoco, where I will present a talk on item-total regressions in dexter. The slides, or a short informal paper, will be posted here after the workshop.

I wish to close, once and for all, the topic of the package’s name. dexter is named after my ex-neighbours’ dog . I was searching for an acronym, preferably not mirt (there are at least three programs under that name already), I looked out of the window, and the name was found. Unfortunately, I could not take a better picture before they moved out, but yes, this is the Real Dexter.

We have absolutely nothing to do with that other character. We meant dexter as in dexterous and dexterity, and the Urban Dictionary is also full of praise:

A sweet, caring, out going guy that is a good friend. Dexters are good boyfriends. Probably the best anyone could ever have (…) Everything about them is perfect.

a sexually attractive male specimen. (damn, that guy is so dexter)

When something is killer (Baby, you’re looking Dexter today.)

Anyway – killer or not, we hope that dexter might be useful to you, and we are working hard to bring it up to version 1.0.0.