iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Andy Seaton

Dr Katherine Whyte @kateywhyte.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Delighted to share this work from my PhD, which is now published in Animal Conservation: 🎉 zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Huge thanks to my co-authors, and to all the funders who supported this work. #MarineMammals #OffshoreWind #RenewableEnergy #AnimalMovement #Seals

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

New paper! This time spelling the hashtag correctly #StatsSky

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Reposted by Andy Seaton

Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

If you've submitted to Journal of Statistical Software in the last few years and have comments (good or bad) about the review process (time lag etc.) could you please DM me ... ?

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Reposted by Andy Seaton

Vianey Leos Barajas @vianeylb.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

The International Statistical Ecology Conference is extending abstract submissions to May 29, 2026 (AoE). Want to encourage more folks in 🇲🇽 & LATAM to participate. Spread the word to your colleagues in Latin America. Happy to answer any questions about the conference! statisticalecology.org

statisticalecology.org

Home - ISEC 2027

The International Statistical Ecology Conference (ISEC) is the main international gathering of statistical ecologists. It is an inclusive interdisciplinary conference at the interface between statisti...

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Reposted by Andy Seaton

Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez @frodsan.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

#StatsPubs No matter how many times you read it, this paper on hierarchical GAMs keeps giving. Clear model explanations together with R code (mgcv). So useful! doi.org/10.7717/peer... Thanks for writing @ericjpedersen.bsky.social, D. Miller, @gsimpson.bsky.social @noamross.net

In this paper, we discuss an extension to two popular approaches to modeling complex structures in ecological data: the generalized additive model (GAM) and the hierarchical model (HGLM). The hierarchical GAM (HGAM), allows modeling of nonlinear functional relationships between covariates and outcomes where the shape of the function itself varies between different grouping levels. We describe the theoretical connection between HGAMs, HGLMs, and GAMs, explain how to model different assumptions about the degree of intergroup variability in functional response, and show how HGAMs can be readily fitted using existing GAM software, the mgcv package in R. We also discuss computational and statistical issues with fitting these models, and demonstrate how to fit HGAMs on example data. All code and data used to generate this paper are available at: github.com/eric-pedersen/mixed-effect-gams.

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Reposted by Andy Seaton

Methods in Ecology and Evolution @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

What is acoustic spatial capture-recapture (aSCR)? In this blog post, Ané Cloete goes through aSCR, answering question on what it is, what it needs to work, what data the model uses and what kind of ecological questions aSCR can answer. Read the whole blog here 👇 buff.ly/1q2Ib6F

methodsblog.com

What is acoustic spatial capture-recapture (aSCR)?

Post provided by Ané Cloete What is acoustic spatial capture-recapture (aSCR)? Estimating how many animals live in a given area is one of the most fundamental challenges in conservation. For specie…

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Radioheadshoulderskneesandtoes Vampire bank holiday weekend Guns and Amaryllises

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Reposted by Andy Seaton

Helen Traill @traillhelen.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Thought this was a nice thoughtful take on AI use - not blaming them for using the tech but equally, making the case for writing as communication and the struggle as the point www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

theguardian.com

I knew my writing students were using AI. Their confessions led to a powerful teaching moment | Micah Nathan

The problem wasn’t just the perfectly polished, yet mediocre prose. It’s what’s lost when we surrender the struggle to translate thought into words

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

10 years of doing applied stats and I've still only seen like 1 regularity condition in that time. Those mild freaks are hiding out there in large numbers waiting to strike.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

I agree. It's why in such a huge fan of Marcus Aurelius' Gettin' Stuff Done.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

I just tried to use google gemini (plus) to help me with some coding. I gave it a .tex file with an outline of a toy simulation I want to run. This simulation is very simple but gemini has repeatedly failed to generate correct code. Every error 'solved' creates 2 new ones.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

I never remember to add these bloody things #StatsSky

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

If you've noticed a common mistake in the literature and you have a nice way of explaining why it's a mistake but don't have a solution, what should you do? Is it worth a paper? What kind of paper? I'm imagining the academic equivalent of a blog post. Is that a thing?

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

This is fun. I just used it to back of the napkin the benefits of moving some finances around that I'm planning on doing this week. Very intuitive interface

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Reflecting today on how I ended up interested in statistics and finding myself being a kind of instrumentalist. Big part of it was spending my early 20s using maths as a form of self soothing. And then at some point it stops working for that because you ask too much of the maths.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Trying to write about "good statistical practice" and applying statistics to models with immense predictive power is the final boss. I feel like this is a weird place to draw a line but I have to draw it here to be consistent with my opinions on messier applications of stats. #statsky

A screenshot of a paragraph from a piece of writing about statistics that reads:

When the international community of physicists agreed on the statistical analysis they would perform on the data they collected at the Large Hadron Collider, they were doing statistics. But when they agreed what the conditions were for declaring the Higgs boson real or not, they were not really doing good statistics anymore. They were agreeing a position as a scientific community about when and how to leave an uncertain world and enter a new world with one new piece of certainty attached to it. The statistical work was one (small) piece of this decision making process. This community-driven process, viewed as a whole, should not, in my view, be seen as a part of statistics, though I understand that it looks like it could be. I should be really explicit here and emphasise that saying something is not statistics is not the thing same as saying that it is bad science.

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Reposted by Andy Seaton

Razzball @razzball.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

feel like they might want to rethink the name

Scientists actually created a device called Kissenger that lets people physically "kiss" each other through their phones, transmitting real lip pressure across the internet in real time.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Trying to blow the 5yo's mind by suggesting she cannot tell for sure if she is growing or if everything in the universe is shrinking except for her. She's having none of it though. She is smarter than many philosophers it would appear

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

PSA if you are typing quickly and want to type xoxoxo please be aware that these letters are close on the keyboard to a bunch of other letters and autocorrect may replace this loving sign off with cockcock Just something to be aware of. Definitely didn't just happen to me.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

If your therapist does not take kindly to debating the foundations of their methods then simply remind them that they were the ones who brought up 'grounding techniques' in the first place.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

I've been reading Good Statistics by I. J. Good. He's entertaining as a writer. He's also pretty good at letting you know exactly what he thinks in the most unimpeachably polite British way possible. #statsky

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

Reading some Montaigne and mostly I enjoy his little melancholic meanderings. Then sometimes he casually drops in shit like this. In the short essay On Idleness

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Nothing radicalised me more than realising that part-time nursery costs for one child the UK cost more than our mortgage. Thankfully we are out of that period now but for the best part of a decade getting part-time childcare was equivalent in cost a second-mortgage on a bigger house than our own

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Bayesians who think like this must be exhausted. So much philosophical weight on their shoulders. Maybe we need to start running some wellness retreats. Yoga followed by rhythmic chanting "I do not need to solve philosophy using maths"

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Reposted by Andy Seaton

Olivier Gimenez 🦦 @oaggimenez.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

📘 New book out soon ! I’m excited to share that 𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞-𝐑𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐇𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐨𝐯 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐬: 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐑 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐁𝐋𝐄 is being published by Chapman & Hall / CRC Press Hope it’s useful to students, researchers, and practitioners #StatisticalEcology #NIMBLE

Book cover for https://oliviergimenez.github.io/banana-book/

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

I like to collect examples of people trying to make numbers feel intuitive by relating them to things in everyday lived experience. For example: "The extra water falling in the UK each year was equivalent to 3m Olympic-sized swimming pools, Fowler said: 'That’s a lot of extra water'"

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

I'm drafting a paper with a collaborator in which we are trying to sell a model with penalised splines. It's opened up a discussion on the 'correspondence' between penalties and priors. Below are some excerpts from an email I sent to my coauthor. This is something I struggle to communicate.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Doing some writing on probability today and I would very much like to know what the deal is with this urn and the coloured balls. Why do we have an urn? Why do we care about the balls? I need more info. It is inexplicable that we have 300 years of urn examples and we don't have more lore.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Some half-formed thoughts on causal inference bc I've been reading about it very casually. (fucking yes, managed to spell them both right first go) I get similar feelings to when I was reading about how the replication crisis would be solved by pre-registration and so

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Playing with Bayesian non-parametrics for distance sampling (preprint out soon). Had a little moment where my feelings about the model were worringly conditional on how many histogram bins I used. These four plots are from the same model fit, just different numbers of bins summarising the data.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

Haven't been on this website in like 3 years, is this thing still on?

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

Just wanted to relax with some skyrim content but he only goes and uses stratified random plot sampling and so now my statistician work brain is triggered. Work brain is not relaxing. Terrible video. Also very good, very informative, would rather teach echo stats in Skyrim than the real world.

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Reposted by Andy Seaton

Chris Sutherland @chrissuthy.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Now accepting applicants for 25-26 intake of our #StatisticalEcology MSc: bit.ly/3ooHNyc. A unique opportunity to develop skills at the interface of #statistics and #ecology (some partial scholarships available too). Please help me share!

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Watched this at Xmas, that's actually Gromit hiding behind there, he just cut out wee eye holes so he could see what the penguin, ahem I mean chicken, was up to.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Can also do this with Lou Reed songs: Kindly! Why don't you swallow razor blades?

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

Re-watching the West Wing and I love the fact that they know a huge news story will drop tomorrow because "it's on the internet right now".

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Tough week for my simulated mosquito populations. The creator has decreed ye shall have density dependent survival probability. To have lost access to infinity, truly I am sorry. Next up though you'll get a cool ability to hibernate for years through long droughts, so swings and roundabouts.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Starting to get a feel for nimble. Write one model, with my own custom distributions, then compile, simulate, fit to simulations. In the old days I would write simulation code and then a separate JAGS model. Lots of potential for errors + contorting the model to be expressed w/ JAGS functions.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

The academic grind never stops even on a Sunday. Got to network, get your research out there.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

I suppose I need a first post. I'm a statistican who is interested in ecology and epidemiology. I work on spatio-temporal modelling, population dynamics, and I have an interested in effectively communicating uncertainty from complex models to people of all backgrounds.

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