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 · 01/07/2026

We are going to have to hope someone asks about deontology in the postmatch interview

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

A large part of political discourse makes me think that it's just reality TV for people who turn their nose up at reality TV. Socially acceptable The Only Way Is Essex for the chattering classes

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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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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

I enjoyed reading it! It sounds like the kind of course I wish I had been able to take

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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 · 10/05/2026

Fun paper I enjoyed that. Made me wonder about a Bayesian version of those inequalities. Might be a nice way to define a 'well-specified' prior as one that gives "tight inequalities, not too much bias". i.e. well-specified if it 'doesn't break the inference procedure'. No need for true DGP ideas

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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 · 10/04/2026

It helped me during my PhD where there was a risk I might develop a Bayesian superiority complex (of a certain philosophical kind). I still think of the phrase "take the posterior seriously" and I'm writing papers this year that do this. So one fan in the UK anyway!

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Shocked to see papers like this: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... I see this kind of thing as downstream of thinking that statistics is an "in situation X, I must use tool Y" type of discipline. So they do 'tests' to 'check the tool is the right one' and there can be only one right tool.

sciencedirect.com

Estimating group fixed effects in panel data with a binary dependent variable: How the LPM outperforms logistic regression in rare events data

Estimating fixed effects models can be challenging with rare events data. Researchers often face difficult trade-offs when selecting between the Linea…

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

You have to imagine this in an Irish accent but the phrase I use is "Who'll be lookin' at ye?" that I stole from an Irish friend's Mum. Something about the accent really makes it land for me.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Not my wheelhouse but this does look really interesting. I'd be coming at it from a producer of statistics angle but this stuff is really important to know about. Statistics is never done in a vacuum.

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Andy Seaton @aseaton.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

This is similar to how I feel about the research that tries to estimate the effect on happiness of becoming a parent. When I read it I think it's confused from the outset. Not my area though so I don't hold this strongly but I'm getting confirmation bias reading this thread.

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

I enjoyed that. Ive attended some Quaker meetings and enjoyed it, although I am not a member. I think they would say they aren't so much anti-clerical as they are anti-laity since they view it as abolishing the laity rather than the clergy since absolutely anyone can stand and minister.

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

I know this is a serious post but it's giving me Blinded by the light vibes. The authoritarian libertarians met the equestrian millenarians to see if it was safe to go outside. Or something. It's 4 am here I dunno

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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

Back in the drawer the LLM goes. Would have been 10x faster to write it myself. I remain an LLM user only using it as a kind of google search, where the aim is to as quickly as possible leave the land of hallucinations and read things for myself.

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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 · 02/03/2026

Surely there are some kinds of unacknowledged bias that means "the main point" is weakened to the point of being almost useless?

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

Wait ...I need Karla to lose? Okay Picard as Karla has to lose but make it look like it's close so everyone maintains respect for everyone else and the federation can come into existence

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

If Karla wins then the west falls then the warp drive is invented by a russian instead and it becomes a tool for authoritarian oppression leading to an alternative future where the federation is EVIL

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

If it's nominated for the man booker it's a mark against. My partner doesn't get why. I say "they are trying way too hard to be clever"

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

Kinds of thoughts I have when I haven't slept well. I'm going to put my phone down

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

Cf why I hate "rational" Vs "emotional" thinking, like that's a real distinction. Mate, you love the feeling you have when you think you are being logical. It's emotions all the way down.

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

A lot of my philosophical disposition is based on deep emotion. I feel like this isn't talked about enough. Why isn't it valid to just say it feels right to think certain things and if you have a different emotional world then you'll probably think something different.

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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 · 26/02/2026

And it's getting smaller! I see explicit advice like "unless you really know what you are doing, just use stan" etc. (And I mostly agree with that - but sometimes you have to go it alone)

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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 · 21/02/2026

Never seen this before. Every time he named a car was a coin flip whether he'd crack or not. Gave me a good chuckle

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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

But has he reviewed the Heinz boil-in-a-tin sticky toffee pudding? I shall reserve judgement until then

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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 enjoyed that. Reminded of when a 'celebrity' statistician came to town and over coffee I expressed annoyance that using established tools in new contexts wasnt seen as novel. "That wouldn't be original enough" was the response. I was just a PhD student, not confident enough to push back.

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

If he's made in my image it's highly likely

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

This is from the article The Bayesian Influence Or How To Sweep Subjectivity Under The Carpet. He uses the term so much he abbreviates it to SUTC. Much SUTCing has occurred according to Good. He also thinks Goodian is a silly way to describe his philosophy so he calls it Doogian.

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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 · 09/02/2026

Not sure if this is relevant but it's what I thought of when I read the above thought experiment.

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