iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Teaching Latent Class Analysis at @unibas.ch today using tidySEM 0.2.12! Basic LCA for continuous, ordinal, and nominal indicators; confirmatory LCA, latent class growth analysis, auxiliary variables, and custom models. Follow along at home using the open coursebook: cjvanlissa.github.io/lca_course/

cjvanlissa.github.io

Latent Class Analysis

Book Description

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

`webexercises` creates interactive exercises for pkgdown, Rmarkdown, and with this update, Quarto (books), Latex output, and #R package vignettes! My hope is that this will support open educational materials, especially in R-package documentation. cran.r-project.org/web/packages...

cran.r-project.org

webexercises: Create Interactive Web Exercises

Functions for easily creating interactive web exercises in 'R Markdown', 'Quarto', and package vignettes that students can use in self-guided learning.

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Pooja Kulkarni @poojak.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Huge thanks to the speakers and the enthusiastic expert team leading this initiative @cjvanlissa.bsky.social , Noah van Dongen, Jason Nak and other !

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Jonas Dora @jonasdora.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

With invaluable help from @cjvanlissa.bsky.social, Max Shinn, @adamkuczynski.bsky.social, Gavin Kelly, @aleksakaurin.bsky.social , and @kevinmking.bsky.social

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Submit to the Theory Methods Conference by June 18! Even if you are not an expert in theory methods, submit to get some great feedback and connect with kindred spirits. Submit your proposal: edu.nl/mj9x6 For an overview of the conference program and keynotes: theorymethodssociety.org/conference.h...

edu.nl

Theory Methods Conference 2026

Submit your proposal for the Theory Methods Conference 2026 before April 18th (deadline). April 18th: Submission deadline April 18th: Registration opens May 16th: Decisions announced May 30th: Final ...

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Shape the future of social science as a PhD student of machine learning-informed theory construction, based on patterns in high-frequency longitudinal data! You will be part of vibrant communities like the INSIGHT Lab, Theory Methods Society, and Tilburg Experience Sampling Center tiu.nu/23721

tiu.nu

Job opening: PhD candidate in Machine Learning-Informed Formal Theory Construction (23721)

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Tim Verstynen @tdverstynen.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Working in modern academia means spending 75% of your time being lectured by admins about not following minutia details of 100+ page handbooks (often now LLM-written) and making endless formatting tweaks to documents you need approved for the work you’re supposed to spend 100% of your time doing.

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

EU scholars should be digitally autonomous, free from unreliable US big tech. In this article I discuss what YOU can do, which lessons the COVID-19 crisis teaches us, and how we can build on the most recent successful culture change in academia (open science) www.scienceguide.nl/2026/03/digi...

scienceguide.nl

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Laura Bringmann 🟥 @bringmannlaura.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

💭 Come work with me, Mark Hoogendoorn, and Dimitris Rizopoulos! We are offering a 3 year PostDoc to do research on the intersection of machine learning (ML) and statistics. 🔢 💫 You will be part of the Stress in Action consortium: stress-in-action.nl/science-of-s... Vacancy: lnkd.in/ewN5T6AA

lnkd.in

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

The "Theory Paper Format" is a template for writing psychological theory papers, developed by the Taskforce Theoretical Psychology (Lorentz Workshop, 2025). Use it to structure your theoretical paper, or (for editors) consider creating journal space for theory papers doi.org/10.17605/OSF...

doi.org

OSF

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moin syed @syeducation.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

New post! "Valuing the Process vs. the Product in Research," in which I try to describe some of the tensions around using GenAI/LLMs in scientific research, and why it can be so difficult to have productive conversations on the topic. getsyeducated.substack.com/p/valuing-th...

getsyeducated.substack.com

Valuing the Process vs. the Product in Research

On reasonable resistance to using GenAI in research

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Does your R-script work on your computer? Want to make it fully reproducible on ANY system, now and in the future? In this video, I demonstrate how to turn R scripts into reproducible, version-controlled projects with worcs, renv, targets, and testthat to verify reproducibility. youtu.be/3mgRFMr5APU

youtu.be

Make Existing R Code Reproducible with 'worcs' and 'targets'

YouTube video by Caspar van Lissa

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Call for Submissions for the Theory Methods Conference 2026, September 30-October 2! theorymethodssociety.org/conference.h... We invite you to: 1) Submit your proposal: edu.nl/mj9x6 2) Invite your colleagues/lab/(PhD) students, and encourage them to submit 3) Share this post

theorymethodssociety.org

Conference –

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Matti Vuorre @matti.vuorre.com · 29/01/2026

Zotero 8 is out (www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-8/). If you're not already using, highly recommended!

zotero.org

Zotero Blog » Blog Archive » Zotero 8

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research.

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Everyone’s talking about the "theory crisis" - but do we fix it with formal- or agent-based models, DAGs, propositions? Regardless: we need a shared medium to exchange and improve ideas. That medium is FAIR theory: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable doi.org/10.1177/1745...

doi.org

To Be FAIR: Theory Specification Needs an Update - Caspar J. Van Lissa, Aaron Peikert, Maximilian S. Ernst, Noah N. N. van Dongen, Felix D. Schönbrodt, Andreas M. Brandmaier, 2026

Open science innovations have focused on rigorous theory testing, yet methods for specifying, sharing, and iteratively improving theories remain underdeveloped....

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Open source software is powerful, but only if people know how to use it. After publishing 12 R packages, I'm shifting toward open educational materials with monthly deep-dive videos on data science in R. First up: mixed data (continuous/categorical) Latent Class Analysis with tidySEM! What's next?

youtube.com

Latent Class Analysis with Continuous and Ordinal Indicators in R

YouTube video by Caspar van Lissa

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Over christmas, I added tidySEM much-requested support for mixed-data latent class analysis (continuous/categorical)! This was technically possible, but the new implementation is easier, faster, with better convergence! Try it by running remotes::install_github("cjvanlissa/tidySEM"); ?mx_mixed_lca

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Fantastic projects awarded, including two I'm part of: Hannes Datta's "ReproHub", which integrates reproducibility/checks into research infrastructure, and Terrence Jorgensen's "Infra-Structural Equation Modelling", which develops lavaan and related open educational material! Congratulations to all!

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

🟥 Ik staak tegen bezuinigingen op het hoger onderwijs. Investeren in de kenniseconomie is noodzakelijk om wereldwijde uitdagingen van klimaat, ongelijkheid, gezondheid, veiligheid, ea het hoofd te bieden. We roepen de overheid op: kies een andere koers. Meer informatie: www.fnv.nl/ho

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

The Paul Meehl Graduate school provides FREE education for PhD students in Europe, especially in metascience and methodology paulmeehlschool.github.io Today is the kick-off of their annual conference!

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

"Preprints are read, shared, and cited — yet dismissed as incomplete until blessed by a publisher. [...] the true measure of scholarship lies in open exchange, not in the industry’s gatekeeping labels of what counts as published. Against publishing - Univers magazine share.google/LSk8PkEKeRSb...

share.google

Against publishing

Preprints are read, shared, and cited — yet still dismissed as incomplete until blessed by a publisher. Matti Vuorre argues that the true measure of scholarsh

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Is anyone willing to share their slides on philosophy of science for undergraduate (statistics) students, especially as it pertains to the hypothetico-deductive framework? Here are my current notes on the topic: lnkd.in/eB-TZGDK

lnkd.in

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Any experiences with "Journal of Computational Social Science"? I reviewed a manuscript that should have been desk-rejected (grammatically incorrect, not embedded in relevant literature, ad-hoc and nonsensical analysis decisions); the decision was "minor revision" based on ONLY my review. How!?

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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International Conference on Computational Social Science @ic2s2.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Day 2 Keynotes kicked off with Laura Nelson's inspiring presentation, “Why Qualitative Research Needs Computational Social Science”. What is the state of this maturing field called qualitative computational methods? What are the ongoing debates and futures? #ic2s2

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Loving @ic2s2.bsky.social , but I wonder if we're asking the right questions. Is "How can I outsource this task to a proprietary, black box, resource-intensive, often un-validated LLM?" when fit-for-purpose classifiers abound a computational a computational research question? Or even scientific?

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

At my preconference workshop @ic2s2.bsky.social participants will conduct a *fully reproducible* and *FAIR theory based* simulation study. The full interactive tutorial is in the theorytools R-package docs: cjvanlissa.github.io/theorytools/... And slides: cjvanlissa.github.io/worcshop/ic2...

lnkd.in

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

To be FAIR: Theory specification needs an update! Theories that others can reuse and update help navigate the "theory crisis". The theorytools R-package now has tutorials showing how to make theories FAIR and use them to select covariates, simulate data, etc osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Platform for Young Meta-Scientists (PYMS) @youngmetascience.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

🚨 Program Highlight! We're thrilled to welcome @cjvanlissa.bsky.social as our keynote speaker on June 5th! He’ll present his work on FAIR theory—a framework to make theories Findable, Accessible, Interoperable & Reusable—and share his path as a meta-scientist. #openscience #FAIRtheory #metascience

Keynote speaker
Caspar J. van Lissa
To be FAIR: Theory specification needs an update

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

I'm hiring a PHD candidate in Machine Learning-Informed Formal Theory Construction. Please encourage talented students to apply, or reach out if you want to collaborate. Looking for machine learning, theory development, and programming skills, and interdisciplinary interests! See tiu.nu/22752

tiu.nu

Job opening: PhD candidate in Machine Learning-Informed Formal Theory Construction (22752)

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Calvin Lai @calvinklai.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Extremely disappointing & cowardly. The American Psychological Association is rescinding diversity requirements. Not due to any actual mandate from the federal government, but only because it may *someday* face pressure from the government www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/h...

nytimes.com

Under Pressure, Psychology Accreditation Board Suspends Diversity Standards

As the Trump administration threatens to strip accrediting bodies of their power, many are scrambling to purge diversity requirements.

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Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Went bouldering with Noah van Dongen and @cjvanlissa.bsky.social. Noah got a Veni grant this year, Caspar a Vidi, and I received a Vici, so we had to make this picture 😊 We will also work together in our projects on improving theorising in psychology!

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ScienceGuide @scienceguide.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Alle Europese landen zijn serieus werk aan het maken van het aantrekken van Amerikaanse wetenschappers. Behalve de Nederlandse coalitie van "boekhouders en ruziemakers", zegt Rob Jetten van D66. Het kabinet is dit ook niet van plan, zegt Dick Schoof.

scienceguide.nl

Kabinet wil geen actieplan om Amerikaanse wetenschappers aan te trekken - ScienceGuide

Maak speciaal actieplan om Amerikaanse wetenschappers en experts naar Nederland te halen, zeggen D66 en Volt. Premier Dick Schoof voelt echter weinig voor een specifieke focus op Amerikaanse kennismig...

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Bridging the gap between #R package documentation and #openscience Open Educational Materials, I'm embedding formative quizzes in the package vignettes (based on @debruine.bsky.social 's webexercises)! Check the development version of github.com/cjvanlissa/t... to see how it's done.

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

To be FAIR: Theory needs an update! FAIR theory can be shared, reused in analysis software, and updated based on new findings. Using existing #openscience infrastructure, it streamlines collaboration, reduces research waste, and accelerates cumulative knowledge development osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Revising papers became easy when I discovered James Conigrave's "revise" package, which inserts tagged snippets from a manuscript into a revision letter! No more back-and-forth, no more consistency checking. Now on CRAN, may it save you as much time as it did me! cran.r-project.org/web/packages...

cran.r-project.org

revise: Dynamic Revision Letters for 'Rmarkdown' Manuscripts

Extracts tagged text from markdown manuscripts for inclusion in dynamically generated revision letters. Provides an R markdown template based on papaja::revision_letter_pdf() with comment cross-refere...

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Who is "the researcher of tomorrow"? Will we be replaced by AI? I really enjoyed discussing these issues in front of a live audience with Studium Generale Tilburg The video starts on the panel discussion, but make sure to check Nathan Wildman's inspiring lecture too www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oRx...

youtube.com

Mini-symposium: The Researcher of Tomorrow - Studium Generale - Tilburg University

YouTube video by TilburgUniversity

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 01/03/2025

Tired but happy to say this is out w @andreaeyleen.bsky.social: Are Neurocognitive Representations 'Small Cakes'? philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24834/ We analyse cog neuro theories showing how vicious regress, e.g. the homunculus fallacy, is (sadly) alive and well — and importantly how to avoid it. 1/

In order to understand cognition, we often recruit analogies as building blocks of theories to aid us in this quest. One such attempt, originating in folklore and alchemy, is the homunculus: a miniature human who resides in the skull and performs cognition. Perhaps surprisingly, this appears indistinguishable from the implicit proposal of many neurocognitive theories, including that of the 'cognitive map,' which proposes a representational substrate for episodic memories and navigational capacities. In such 'small cakes' cases, neurocognitive representations are assumed to be meaningful and about the world, though it is wholly unclear who is reading them, how they are interpreted, and how they come to mean what they do. We analyze the 'small cakes' problem in neurocognitive theories (including, but not limited to, the cognitive map) and find that such an approach a) causes infinite regress in the explanatory chain, requiring a human-in-the-loop to resolve, and b) results in a computationally inert account of representation, providing neither a function nor a mechanism. We caution against a 'small cakes' theoretical practice across computational cognitive modelling, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, wherein the scientist inserts their (or other humans') cognition into models because otherwise the models neither perform as advertised, nor mean what they are purported to, without said 'cake insertion.' We argue that the solution is to tease apart explanandum and explanans for a given scientific investigation, with an eye towards avoiding van Rooij's (formal) or Ryle's (informal) infinite regresses.

Figure 1 in https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24834/

Box 1 in https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24834/

Box 2 in https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24834/

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Is the AI bubble bursting? Maybe for ChatGPT, but there is now widespread support for automating everyday tasks. Academics build small specialized models, trained on high quality data, informed by domain knowledge. It's time to incorporate these into everyday workflows instead of "asking ChatGPT".

scienceguide.nl

‘Wetenschap kan wat AI niet kan’ - ScienceGuide

Nu AI-modellen onbetrouwbaar blijken, moeten wetenschappers de hunne naar de praktijk brengen, zegt Caspar van Lissa.

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Noam Ross @noamross.net · 05/02/2025

Open Science and Open Source only with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility. Inclusion is essential to science, and science is only worthwhile if it lifts everyone up together. ropensci.org/blog/2025/02... #OpenSource #OpenScience

ropensci.org

Open Science and Open Source only with Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Including all of humanity is and always will be at the heart of open science.

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Did this interview (Dutch) for @tilburg-university.bsky.social series "The Career Path", about interdisciplinarity, open science, and collaboration. Hopefully, this will encourage young scholars to pursue their curiosity and contribute to research that matters. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z5h...

youtube.com

Het loopbaanpad van: Caspar van Lissa

YouTube video by TilburgUniversity

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

DeepSeek powerfully demonstrates the value of open source and the importance of optimization. I hope it will also help democratize LLMs. Watch it run on a Raspberry Pi, accelerated by an AMD graphics card! youtu.be/o1sN1lB76EA?...

youtu.be

OpenAI's nightmare: Deepseek R1 on a Raspberry Pi

YouTube video by Jeff Geerling

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Not every study needs super-complicated statistics, sometimes all you need is a contingency table. Now, thanks to Yasin Altinisik, Rebecca Kuiper et al, you can test informative hypotheses for contingency tables with the gorica R-package! link.springer.com/epdf/10.3758...

link.springer.com

An AIC-type information criterion evaluating theory-based hypotheses for contingency tables

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Open science is efficient: reusable code, data, results, and educational materials saves unnecessary work. Wen facing cutbacks, it's a bad idea to cut back on practices that increase efficiency! universonline.nl/nieuws/2025/...

universonline.nl

Do not cut back on open science

The proposed budget cuts in higher education will directly impact funding for open science. But if the goal is to work more efficiently, now is precisely the ti

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

It was a pleasure to contribute to this Participatory Value Evaluation on Research Funding by the Dutch Young Academy; one main conclusion - that dependence on grant funding threatens academic freedom - is more relevant than ever in the context of cutbacks. dejongeakademie.nl/en/news/2937...

dejongeakademie.nl

Use evidence-based methods for decision-making on complex policy issues - De Jonge Akademie

News

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