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Sam Zhang

@samzhang.bsky.social
408 followers 158 following 29 posts

Assistant professor in statistics at the Vermont Complex Systems Institute || Formerly @ SFI, CU Boulder APPM || No longer on socials, send me an email instead || sam.zhang.fyi

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Reposted by Sam Zhang
Kyle Niemeyer, PhD @kyleniemeyer.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
I'm excited to (belatedly) announce the two inaugural #URSSI Early Career Fellows, @matthewfeickert.com & @samzhang.bsky.social ! You can read more in our official post: urssi.us/blog/2025/04... We'll be opening our next call for fellowship proposals in the coming months, keep an eye out!
urssi.us
URSSI Blog
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Dan Larremore @danlarremore.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
An AI feature that I *actually* want in Zoom: when it sees you're about to sneeze, it auto-mutes you. h/t @aaronclauset.bsky.social @nicklaberge.bsky.social @samzhang.bsky.social
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Dan Goldstein @dggoldst.bsky.social · 18/09/2024
By Matt Hardy @mdahardy.bsky.social Sam Zhang @samzhang.bsky.social Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social Jake Hofman jakehofman.com Dan Goldstein @dggoldst.bsky.social
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Nick LaBerge @nicklaberge.bsky.social · 19/07/2024
1/ I’m excited to share our article "Gendered hiring and attrition on the path to parity for academic faculty" with Hunter Wapman @aaronclauset.bsky.social @danlarremore.bsky.social , now published @elife.bsky.social : elifesciences.org/articles/93755
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 05/11/2023
who did this
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Aaron Clauset @aaronclauset.bsky.social · 09/11/2023
Slides from my talk "Gender & Retention Patterns Among US Faculty" earlier this week @UMass ADVANCE, on our paper with the same name, led by @kspoon.bsky.social. What an amazing team at UMass, doing critical work to improve science and academia 👏 aaronclauset.github.io/slides/Claus...
slide title: "attrition over a career." shows data indicating that for "all-cause attrition", at every career age, women are more likely to leave than menslide title: "study design." highlights the survey portion of the study, intended to elicit the reasons faculty leave their jobs, noting that gendered reasons for leaving are more important than gendered rates of leavingslide title: "push & pull." shows data indicating that women feel pushed out of their academic jobs at substantially higher rates than men, and that gender+career age are the strongest predictors of whether a survey respondent reported feeling pushed out of their faculty jobslide title: "conclusions." 1. women faculty universally leave academia at higher rates than men, but the rates vary in magnitude by domain and career age, mainly effecting tenured women, in non-STEM fields, at lower-prestige universities. but regardless of the rates, women leave for different, more worrisome reasons than men: they feel pushed out of their jobs. retention efforts have to focus on these reasons, not the rates
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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 08/11/2023
I like this framing a lot, and use it in slides when describing the difference between these two types of uncertainty
A visualization of a Normal distribution with label "True (unknown) population" and a label pointing to the mean with the text "I want to estimate this"Same as previous, but with the addition of a row showing a sample of five draws from the population distribution, the mean, and its uncertaintySame as previous, but with several additional rows showing how the uncertainty in the mean becomes narrower as sample size goes up.

Then, another column titled "Predictive uncertainty" showing the same population distribution with an arrow pointing to its density curve and the label "I want to predict this".Same as previous, but with additional rows in the "Predictive uncertainty" column showing that as the sample size goes up, the predictive uncertainty distribution does not get narrower, but it becomes a better approximation of the true population distribution.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 07/11/2023
I am delighted to announce that the Department of Biology at the University of Washington is advertising for a tenure-track assistant professor position on the quantitative understanding of collective behavior. I will be chairing the search; details are here: apply.interfolio.com/130336
Snow geese fill the sky at sunset in Washington's Skagit Valley.
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Sam Zhang @samzhang.bsky.social · 01/11/2023
the real horror here is misspelling "correlation"...
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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 29/10/2023
My faves: “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer” (not Plutarch; Die Hard) “Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds of the sky” (not Charlemagne; Indiana Jones & the Holy Grail) Ezekiel 25:17 doesn’t exist except in Pulp Fiction
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Valeria Rueda @valerueda.bsky.social · 27/10/2023
My recent paper in Economic Journal: In the Econ job market men and women are recommended differently: letters for women stress hard work, those for men more likely highlight brilliance. This affects job placement. Link to Paper: t.co/HUieaMuERd With Giovanni Facchini and Markus Eberhardt
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Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 25/10/2023
Hard to top Florian’s thread:
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Ed Yong is offline @edyong209.bsky.social · 25/10/2023
Phenomenal, wrenching essay by Hala Alyan.
nytimes.com
Opinion | Why Must Palestinians Audition for Your Empathy?
The task of the Palestinian is to audition for empathy and compassion. To prove that we deserve it.
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Sam Zhang @samzhang.bsky.social · 25/10/2023
🤔
Output of DALLE-3 with the following prompt: Illustration of a gigantic contraption, appearing almost like a creature, with multiple arms stretching out to grasp artworks and literature from heaps around it. These treasures are dropped into a big cauldron labeled 'AI Mixer'. As the vat stirs, the contents morph into a shimmering digital concoction. From the vat, hoses spray this concoction onto oversized canvases and printing machinery, creating puzzling and distorted results. Another group of machines then grabs these outputs, converting them into a different, more viscous digital substance.
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Aaron Clauset @aaronclauset.bsky.social · 24/10/2023
This 2019 Science Advances paper lives rent-free in my head, and I think it's the social science paper that I mention the most in everyday conversation with my peers or elders... #youths #olds #science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
paper abstract "Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking" by Protzko and Schooler. it's a zinger!
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Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 24/10/2023
Andrew Gelman reviewed my book, Modeling Social Behavior. “The book has social science, it has code, it has graphs—it’s got everything… I hope it’s taught in thousands of classes and sells a zillion copies.” statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2023/10/24/m...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
“Modeling Social Behavior”: Paul Smaldino’s cool new textbook on agent-based modeling | Stat...
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 24/10/2023
Profoundly disappointing if true. Whether or not Michael's post was in good taste, he retweeted a mainstream satirical site to his personal social media account. As an eLife editor I have no interest in monitoring my social media activity to ensure everything I post represents the journal.
I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.
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Katie Spoon @kspoon.bsky.social · 20/10/2023
1/ New paper! “Gender and retention patterns among U.S. faculty” w/ N Laberge KH Wapman @samzhang AC Morgan M Galesic BK Fosdick @danlarremore @aaronclauset: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... A systematic study of gendered rates & reasons for faculty attrition in US academia 🧵
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Sam Zhang @samzhang.bsky.social · 16/10/2023
For those of you near Burlington, VT, I'll be giving a talk about this paper (and another recent preprint) at the STAT@UVM colloquium today! site.uvm.edu/statatuvm/se...
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Ed Yong is offline @edyong209.bsky.social · 13/10/2023
An incredible essay by Arielle Angel, EIC of Jewish Currents: jewishcurrents.org/we-cannot-cr...
jewishcurrents.org
“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other”
The editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents on recommitting to our movements in this moment.
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Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · 15/10/2023
"246 biologists get different results from same data sets. Wide distribution of findings shows how analytical choices drive conclusions." #philsci 🌍 #evobio www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets
Wide distribution of findings shows how analytical choices drive conclusions. Wide distribution of findings shows how analytical choices drive conclusions.
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Aaron Clauset @aaronclauset.bsky.social · 15/10/2023
Strong endorse here: There is no measurement, no summary statistics, no statistical tests, and no descriptive analyses without underlying theories & models. A powerful skill to develop as a scientist is to become conscious of the unstated theories that are being used in this or that scholarship.
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David Klion @davidklion.bsky.social · 11/10/2023
For @nplusonemag.bsky.social, I wrote about how we're living through the post-9/11 period all over again, in all the worst ways
nplusonemag.com
Have We Learned Nothing? | David Klion
There’s a pervasive censoriousness right now—conservatives denouncing liberals, liberals denouncing leftists, leftists denouncing other leftists—that’s immediately familiar from the days and w...
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 10/10/2023
Show any academic this graph and they'll immediately note that the tenure packet is due not longer after the peak. @samzhang.bsky.social, @danlarremore.bsky.social, @aaronclauset.bsky.social, and colleagues provide a more nuanced explanation in their new preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2309.04414
Mean annual academic productivity (papers) peaks around 4 years into the academic career.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 20/08/2023
Befriending crows is a wonderful thing. Robert Frost knew. "The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued." So often my crow friends have saved a day ruined by work or otherwise. (2/n)
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Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 03/10/2023
Publication day! The modeling textbook I started five years ago is finally out today. I'm proud of it, and really grateful to everyone who helped make it better. PUP: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb... AMZN: www.amazon.com/dp/069122414...
Cover of Modeling Social Behavior
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Dan Larremore @danlarremore.bsky.social · 03/10/2023
Karikó articulates brilliantly why prestige is such a critical variable if you want to understand the scientific ecosystem! This is why our group at CU Boulder (w/ @aaronclauset.bsky.social) focuses on unpacking the mechanisms and impacts of prestige in science. It's fascinating and important!
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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 03/10/2023
Katalin Karikó on the status economy of academia. She’s the hero we don’t deserve. Source: josephnoelwalker.com/147-katalin-...
There is a “centre” where the money, the fame, is; most likely your proposal gets funded because it’s on the most favourable topic. Maybe today, RNA is [most favourable]. If you are working with mRNA, maybe that's the centre there.

And then there are people in the periphery. There is no fame, there is no money, no nothing there. The only thing in the periphery is freedom. You can do what you like to do, what you feel is important.

Here’s what a proposal is: why they should give me money. And they should question that. “She came from university nobody knew about.” “She never had a mentor who was famous.”

And somehow it gravitates always to the same people, same circle. They get published there, they get the money. And that's another explanation: I was not famous enough or didn't have anybody who would support me in a way that somebody that’s a famous and well-established scientist stands behind you and says, “Oh, look at this, it’s good.”
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Sam Zhang @samzhang.bsky.social · 29/09/2023
👋👋👋 my name is Sam (he/him) and I'm a fifth year PhD candidate in Applied Math at the University of Colorado Boulder. My research is in computational social science and interdisciplinary data science, focusing on the "science of science". Check out my website at sam.zhang.fyi! #AcademicSky #PhDSky
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