Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 29/09/2026My impression is that few things are more German than complaining about Germany. I used to find this annoying. Now I think it's a good thing. It's good to have a clear idea of how things could be better and not declare everything is fine just because it's yours. 000
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 29/09/2026My first time visiting Germany from the US, I was in awe at how punctual, quiet, and smooth the trains were (looking at you SF BART). I was surprised at how critical Germans were of DB; didn't they know how good they had it? After traveling by train in Switzerland, I get it now. 110
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 21/09/2026While intuitive, I'm pretty sure this etymology is incorrect. Sylvester coined the term "matrix" for a much less intuitive reason: Determinants were his main object of interest, so he called the thing from which determinants originated a matrix (womb): mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Miller/mathw...mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.ukEarliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics (M) 130
Reposted by Seth Axen 🪓Aki Vehtari @avehtari.bsky.social · 09/09/2026A FAQ is what to do in case of high Pareto-k's with PSIS-LOO or PSIS-LOGO. In case of hierarchical models we can integrate out group specific parameters before PSIS. We investigated reliability of some alternative integration methods with the eventual goal of automating this arxiv.org/abs/2609.05713 1233
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 01/08/2026Disappointing to see the witch hunt. I guess if he could be blamed for anything, it's for not adequately preparing his community to understand that using AI as a tool at any point in the process is not inherently unethical and for apologizing too quickly. 030
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 23/07/2026I wonder how they avoid falling into the trap where the prover/verifier always says the verifier/prover is wrong to get an award 000
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 22/07/2026If possible, having it or another model design experiments to attempt to falsify can be very helpful. Also asking a different model to review parts of it can work. But all of this is just to fail early; I usually need to review it all manually in the end. 000
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 21/07/2026Great write-up and comparison! I'd also completely forgetting about my original idea and write-up, so thanks @spinkney.bsky.social for improving it and showing it works well in practice! 270
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 21/07/2026Interestingly, I don't think my output has substantially increased. Rather, I've found that it's much lest costly now for me to tackle more difficult engineering issues in my packages, conduct associated lit reviews, and run experiments. 0143
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 21/07/2026I don't post here very often, so I think it's worth checking in here to note that since I wrote this, I've transitioned to a heavy agent-based dev workflow. Partially that's due to a huge improvement in the models, partially due to some useful skills/harnesses. 1341
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 17/07/2026I still use "delve". If it was good enough for Tolkien, it's good enough for me. 030
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 30/06/2026To be fair, I'd never heard of "cooling centers" when I lived in CA, but almost any home or business had A/C. But in my German town, their advice for the heatwave was basically: don't bake, exercise, or eat hot food; close your shutters; take a cold shower. We don't have a mall, sooo... 110
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 30/06/2026How many times per day might an animal or plant try to kill me? Asking for a friend. 230
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 26/06/2026And yes, they were talking about Bayesian models, not Bayesian curls. 020
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 26/06/2026That feeling when you join a weekly video group check-in with your strength training coach, and the very first word you hear is "Bayesian"... 🤗 120
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 20/06/2026Daredevil: Born Again has some dumb parts but is overall quite good, very much in the vein of the original Netflix show. But IMO none of Marvel's shows can compare to WandaVision. Hopefully VisionQuest doesn't suck. 010
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 18/06/2026I think this is the first one I've actually managed to solve. Got lucky on the purple: 4 × 3 100 points • 0 mistakes 🟩🌟🟩 🟨🌟🟨 🌟🟪🟪 🟦🌟🟦 000
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 27/04/2026I find the smoothness of the marmoset and weasel to be unsettling. 010
Reposted by Seth Axen 🪓TMLR Published Papers @tmlr-pub.bsky.social · 09/04/2026Amortized Bayesian Workflow Chengkun LI, Aki Vehtari, Paul-Christian Bürkner et al. Action editor: Tom Rainforth openreview.net/forum?id=osV7adJlKD #mcmc #generative #amortized 033
Reposted by Seth Axen 🪓ArviZ @arviz.bsky.social · 19/03/2026ArviZ 1.0 is out! We have refactored it to be more modular, flexible & lightweight. For an overview of the changes, check the migration guide. python.arviz.org/en/stable/us...python.arviz.orgGetting started — ArviZ 1.0.0 documentation 21510
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 17/03/2026media.tenor.coma man in a green sweater is standing in front of a pioneer video playerALT: a man in a green sweater is standing in front of a pioneer video player 020
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 12/03/2026Also I start to get the chills when I know I'm dealing with a special case of a hypergeometric function, because I just *know* as soon as I try differentiating or integrating something I'll be stuck with just a hypergeometric. 050
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 12/03/2026Literally every function that is non-integrable. They have evil intentions, and I don't trust them. 1100
Reposted by Seth Axen 🪓Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 12/03/2026"Other extensions of the factorial function do exist, but the gamma function is the most popular and useful. " did the gamma function herself/itself write this 2638
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 12/03/2026Anyone aware of a collection of agent skills tailored towards FOSS workflows for package development and maintenance? Strongly considering writing my own. 111
Reposted by Seth Axen 🪓Aki Vehtari @avehtari.bsky.social · 04/03/2026If you have been using LOO-PIT, this is a must read for you! @herman-tesso.bsky.social has done excellent work with this paper! Thanks for @florencebockting.bsky.social and @aloctavodia.bsky.social for getting this to bayesplot and ArviZ. I'll notify when I have my casestudies updated with this 0162
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 28/01/2026Yes there are dozens of tasks throughout the day that I can accomplish much faster with AI, but these are usually sporadic and non-routine. Building a whole set of agents to manage these would then become its own large task with little concrete benefit that I can see. 030
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 28/01/2026Like my #1 productivity blockers are my own mental clarity/energy (which are helped by exercising, resting, and preserving a routine and focused time for thinking, writing, and hacking on stuff) and family/home duties (which AI is mostly useless for). 140
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 28/01/2026I've been seeing some folks recently explain how they're using agent-based workflows to help manage their life/work. I think it's great that people are sharing this and probably super useful for some. But I still haven't seen a use case that would be helpful for me. 141
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 20/01/2026I think @vgel.me is thinking of the subset of Pauline letters in the canon for which the scholarly consensus is that they're pseudepigraphic. Would probably include 1&2 Timothy, Titus, Ephesians, and a few others. You can find them online in any digital Bible. 150
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 07/01/2026Over the break I was picking away at a personal project where brms is clearly the best tool to use, and hot damn, is brms nice! 0101
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 03/01/2026Introduce yourself as what almost killed you: Hi there, I'm a hernia 010
Reposted by Seth Axen 🪓Demetri @phdemetri.bsky.social · 26/11/2025I believe eigen fly. I believe eigen touch the sky. 324042
Seth Axen 🪓 @sethaxen.com · 24/11/2025I guess there's Rogue Scholar for archiving blog posts and generating a DOI (rogue-scholar.org). The main problem is one of venue. For arXiv I'd want to rework/polish the content to increase precision, and IME that can take at least as long as writing the original blog post. 010