iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Stats explorations w/ Claude remind me of "a 4-wheel drive vehicle just gets you stuck in deeper mud". Going down rabbit holes I would previously have avoided ... surprisingly (to me) small/complicated differences between LRT & Wald for coverage/type-1 error ... bbolker.github.io/bbmisc/wald_...

bbolker.github.io

Wald vs likelihood ratio tests: examples

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Anyone dug into back-and-forth on Frank (2024) doi.org/10.1126/scie... (estimates an 8% increase in infant mortality due to WNS →insect pops → insecticide [!])? Critique by Marx-Stoelting et al: doi.org/10.1007/s002... . Frank's response: doi.org/10.1007/s002... Rejoinder: doi.org/10.1007/s002...

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

can someone point me to the (somewhat recent?) skeet along the lines of "I fitted <super-fancy model>, now I'm going to boil it all down to a simple linear slope _post hoc_ and make that hypothesis test my main conclusion <sarcastic>" ? (The original skeet was wittier and more eloquent ...)

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Danielle Navarro @djnavarro.net · 06/08/2026

The title is a little pointed, but I am very serious here. Academics, medical researchers, and other organisations should not collect data on birth sex. It is rarely relevant, and it almost always leads to privacy violations for transgender people. Please share. I would like people to read this one.

blog.djnavarro.net

Separating sex and gender is statistical malpractice – Notes from a data witch

Statisticians and academics in Australia should ignore the terrible advice of most LGBTIQA+ organisations and read this post instead. The 2020 ABS standard is almost never the correct way to collect d...

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Martyn Plummer @martynplummer.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

What's new in JAGS 5.0.0 part 1: Initial Values martynplummer.wordpress.com/2026/08/03/w...

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Vianey Leos Barajas @vianeylb.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I have a project for this AI for science postdoc application: schmidtfellows.utoronto.ca To work on videos of migrating fish (eg salmon), for classification, segmentation, uncertainty quantification. Don’t need to be AI expert, but demonstrate high potential. Reach out if interested.

schmidtfellows.utoronto.ca

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

**V. loosely scoped question** talked to a student about connections between Bayes & freq, e.g.: empirical Bayes [state-space, mixed models, penalized splines]; regularization/regularizing priors; sampling vs optimization (Monte Carlo EM/MCMC vs MLE/MAP). Suggest books/blog posts/papers on this ...?

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

(1/?) As happens periodically, someone has popped up on the R help list asking for someone to fill out their 'vendor security' form (does you product do security audits, who can we sue if something goes wrong, etc.) Feels like there must be a market for someone to provide such security guarantees.

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Solomon Kurz @solomonkurz.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

#rstats question: Is the mean of the BLUPs from a multilevel model unbiased? I have a couple clarification statements below.

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Physalia-courses@ONLINE @physaliacourses.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

The #GLLVMs in R with @vdveenb.bsky.social is almost full - last chance to join us next week! Thanks for spreading the word! www.physalia-courses.org/courses-work...

physalia-courses.org

GLLVMs: Advanced multivariate analysis of ecological communities in R

7-10 July 2026

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Hmm, Kobo daily deals is offering _Brave New World_ and _The Stranger_ as YA books ... ? I know these are often on high school reading lists, but seems weird. (Not sure CS Lewis would be happy being listed adjacent to Huxley and Camus ...??)

Kobo's "young adult books on sale" showing thumbnails for _The Chronicles of Narnia_, _Brave New World_, _Mission Improbable_, and _The Stranger_

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Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez @frodsan.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

AI, Comparative Advantage, and the Next Decade of Ecological Research. Food for thought @jdrakephd.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/ele.... #ecopubs

For the past two decades, the message to young ecologists has been consistent: learn to code, learn statistics, learn machine learning, learn ‘modelling’ (GIS, differential equations, species distribution modelling, etc.). That message was correct and remains so. But it is incomplete. The researchers who will hold a durable comparative advantage in the decades ahead may be those who invested in the patient, expensive, logistically difficult work of building field programs, maintaining experimental infrastructure and cultivating the expertise required to collect data that no one else can collect.

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

(1/2) Claude helped me figure out how to build/install `libgourou` so that I can read DRM-protected books on my reMarkable: github.com/bbolker/libg... . This is making me think about how much we still need to teach "command line bullshittery" eytanadar.medium.com/on-the-value... any more?

github.com

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

(1/?) Thinking ahead to fall semester (??!?) and wondering about quarto frameworks that would work well for class, including (1) creating multiple versions (skeleton for handouts, complete for presentation) and formats (revealjs, docx, pdf); (2) macros for highlighting glossary words etc;

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Leah Berman Williams @leahwrenn.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

This is such a good article. Make sure you read the whole thing—I’m excited to learn about stoplights (or rather, go-lights)!

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Henrik Bengtsson @henrikbengtsson.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

#RStats challenge and potential community project: * Create a minimal package 'dumpsterfire' that triggers as many 'R CMD check' issues as possible! Fun, but could also become a excellent resource for illustrating and understanding package check issues Here's a start: github.com/HenrikBengts...

Screenshot of the README on the package GitHub repository. The title of the README is "dumpsterfire - A Minimal R Package With Tons of Issues 🔥".

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Thinking about how this might go Listener: My chains aren't converging Andrew: Your model is bad Aki: Your parameterization is bad Richard: The Buddha teaches us that numerical integration is suffering

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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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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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Vincent Arel-Bundock @vincentab.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Do you know a good framework to document data analysis choices? Ex: dropping obs, recoding a var, tuning pars, model + test statistics, etc. Ideally human-readable so people don't have to read my entire codebase. Low-maintenance+ machine-readable for bonus points! #RStats #PyData

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Helen Salisbury @helensalisbury.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Ok Bluesky hive mind - please tell me what this figure represents. On the ceiling of one of the galleries in the Doria Pamphilij in Rome c C18th. At first glance I thought it was a musical instrument. Maybe architecture?

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keholsinger.bsky.social @keholsinger.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

That fireside chat with Jay Bhattacharya: a view from across the pond - “In his answers to difficult questions, Bhattacharya revealed himself as someone who gets very uncomfortable when confronted with inconsistencies in his behaviour or views.”

deevybee.blogspot.com

That fireside chat with Jay Bhattacharya: a view from across the pond

On Friday I attended (virtually) a workshop organised by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine on Enhancing Scientific...

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Caitlin Rivers @cmyeaton.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I have been really impressed with @beaconbio.bsky.social, and find myself using it more and more. Excellent resource to replace ProMED.

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James Balamuta @coatless.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

RIP Tomáš Kalibera. #rstats lost a huge contributor today. Condolences to his young family. stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-...

Screenshot of the announcement by Simon Urbanek regarding Tomáš Kalibera’s untimely passing.

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Tomáš Kalibera on 1 April, a valuable member of the R core team for close to 10 years and a good friend, after a short but aggressive illness. Tomáš brought in fresh perspective and knowledge, enabling him to improve many aspects of R, including performance and reliability. He created many tools aimed at aiding package authors to make their packages more reliable, and was instrumental in modernizing the Windows build of R. He was an active member of CRAN and the R community, providing help to package authors, and he was the most prolific writer on the R core blog. He will be remembered for his profound contributions to R by millions of users. He is survived by his wife and 1 year old son. A full obituary will be posted in due time.

Respectfully,
Simon Urbanek

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Volker Rudolf @volkerrudolf.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Post Doc position alert! Come work with us on the evolution of cannibalism. Full job description in link below. Salary starts at $58k plus benefits. (Please help spread the word) emdz.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

emdz.fa.us2.oraclecloud.com

Postdoctoral Associate - BioSciences

Dr. Volker Rudolf’s group in the Department of BioSciences at Rice University is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the field of Evolution and Behavior. The ideal candidate will have strong ...

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

transcribe AMR (sound recorder) file to ABC automatically they said ... it'll be easy, they said ... (AMR →WAV [ffmpeg] → midi [ waon kichiki.github.io/waon/ ] → abc [abc2midi] → PostScript [abcm2ps] → PDF [ps2pdf]. Unsurprisingly, WAV → midi is the weak link. (Should try a simpler round trip next)

A page of complicated sheet music that is more or less gibberish

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Isabella Velásquez @ivelasq3.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Did you know you (yes, YOU!) can contribute to base R? Base R is the foundation of everything #RStats. If you’ve ever found a bug or thought of an improvement, you can help shape the language. Join @ellakaye.co.uk on the Posit Data Science Lab tomorrow to learn how to get started! pos.it/dslab

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Natalie Cooper @nhcooper123.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

nhcooper123.github.io

Phylogenetic Comparative Methods

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Mariko Bennett @nachoriko.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

I defended my PhD 10 years ago today. That was the least remarkable thing that happened that day. Sharing something I wrote about it last year. Since then "the horrors persist but so do we." And with dignity.

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

@vdveenb.bsky.social where is the best venue for asking `gllvm` questions? Wanted to see if I could use the devel version to fit a multitype model equivalent to the following MCMCglmm specification (i.e. two different 'rows' grouping variables, each with random slopes) @idworkin.bsky.social ...

## fit multi-type model (don't scale count var)
form_MMLM2 <- cbind(femur_s, tibia_s, tarsus_s, SCT) ~
trait:(genotype*temp) - 1

m2 <- MCMCglmm(form_MMLM2,
random=~ us(trait):line,
rcov=~ us(trait):units,
data= as.data.frame(dll_data),
family = rep(c("gaussian", "poisson"), times = c(3, 1)),
nitt= 10000, burnin= 2000, thin=10)

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Sebastian Schreiber @sebastianschreiber.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Summer School on Stochastic Population Dynamics led by Alex Hening. A great opportunity for anyone interested in learning about stochastic methods and their applications to population dynamics. stochasticsummerschool.com www.mathprograms.org/db/programs/... Please repost.

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Amstat-American Statistical Association @amstatnews.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

While working full-time & raising a child, Grace Wahba earned advanced degrees, completing her PhD at Stanford and becoming the first female faculty member in statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. #womenshistorymonth #statwomen magazine.amstat.org/blog/2026/03... #statssky

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Olivier Gimenez 🦦 @oaggimenez.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

📘 Nouveau livre ! Introduction à la statistique bayésienne avec le logiciel R Découvrez pas à pas la statistique bayésienne et sa mise en œuvre dans R : théorème de Bayes, MCMC, priors, régression, GLM/GLMM et comparaison/validation de modèles. Aux éditions Quae 🙏 📷 Crédit photo : Yann Raulet

couverture du livre introduction à la statistique bayésienne avec R

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

niche (pronounced "neesh" 🇨🇦) question: can anyone tell me the dates when NSERC Discovery Grant results were announced (by university research offices to applicants) in 2024 and 2025? I want to update my predictive model gist.github.com/bbolker/ce64... for this year ...

gist.github.com

projection/prediction of NSERC Discovery award dates

projection/prediction of NSERC Discovery award dates - nserc_dates.R

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Kate Laskowski @katelaskowski.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Stoked about the new Replication Studies section in Behavioral Ecology? Me too! Jeremy Fox over at Dynamic Ecology interviewed me about our recent commentary on this topic and I'd love to hear the community's thoughts! dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/t...

dynamicecology.wordpress.com

The value of close replications and how to get more of them: interview with Kate Laskowski

Welcome to our latest interview with the author of a recent interesting paper. Today’s interview was conducted by email with behavioral ecologist Kate Laskowski, first author ofLaskowski et a…

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Has anyone tried vibe (LLM) translating Matlab to Julia? How did it go?

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

I was going to ask someone to remind me of the magic "resize quarto figures interactively, then insert the figure size parameters back into the quarto document" plug-in; I managed to find it, so here it is again for anyone who didn't hear about it the first time: github.com/EmilHvitfeld...

github.com

GitHub - EmilHvitfeldt/quarto-revealjs-editable: Repositioning and resizing of images and text directly in quarto revealjs slides

Repositioning and resizing of images and text directly in quarto revealjs slides - GitHub - EmilHvitfeldt/quarto-revealjs-editable: Repositioning and resizing of images and text directly in quarto...

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Solomon Kurz @solomonkurz.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

What's the best open book for data science from a base-R perspective? #rstats

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

for lazy Firefox users like me who want to suppress Google's AI responses to search with the least amount of effort ... addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefo... (I didn't count, but I think it was fewer than 5 mouse clicks)

addons.mozilla.org

udm14 – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-CA)

Download udm14 for Firefox. Adds a Google search engine that includes the udm=14 parameter

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Karl Rohe @karlrohe.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

check it out: datamint.ing

datamint.ing

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Ben Bolker @bbolker.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

annals of yak shaving: troubling remembering the name of the amazing github.com/cynkra/const... pkg (human-readable `dput()`). I remember (1) I have it installed (2) the names starts with "c" and (3) is an English word ...

$grepv("^c", rownames(installed.packages())) |> Filter(f = \(x) x %in% qdap::GradyAugmented)$

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