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Steve Wang

@stevewang251.bsky.social
1.4K followers 417 following 614 posts

Professor of Statistics at Swarthmore College and former MLB Research Analyst. I use statistics to study paleontology, evolution, extinction, and baseball. I also compose percussion music for fun.

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Reposted by Steve Wang
Howie Hua @howiehua.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Okay I MIGHT have found a new way to visually obtain the harmonic mean because I could not find this visual anywhere. Even if it's not new, I'm still really proud of it because it's understandable and valid.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Brilliant explanation. I'm a statistician and I've never seen this before.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Awesome shot. What is the new skyscraper on the right?
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Reposted by Steve Wang
Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 22/09/2026
Tyrannosaurus xkcd.com/3300/
Comic. [Person with long hair pointing to diagram with Tyrannosaurus Rex standing next to a person.] PERSON: We now believe the primary prey of Tyrannosaurus Rex was these humans who kept standing next to it for scale.
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Reposted by Steve Wang
Ian Dworkin @idworkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
principlesofpaleontology3rd.org
principlesofpaleontology3rd.org
Principles of Paleontology, 3rd Edition – Free access to Principles of Paleontology, 3rd Edition (Michael Foote and Arnold I. Miller, 2007, W.H. Freeman and Co., 354 pp.)
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Reposted by Steve Wang
The Onion @theonion.com · 16/09/2026
Biologists Announce There Absolutely Nothing We Can Learn From Clams theonion.com/biologists-announce-th…
Biologists Announce There Absolutely Nothing We Can Learn From Clams
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Swarthmore College is hiring a TT Assistant Professor in Mathematics, with a specialization in analysis. Friendly colleagues, excellent students, beautiful campus, convenient location (Philadelphia suburbs). Happy to answer any questions. www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/28... #AcademicSky 🧪
aerial photo of the Swarthmore College campus in autumn, showing the main quad with fall foliage and the Philadelphia skyline in the distance
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Did they just add a new wing to the building? I did not know that.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
First day of class -- still a thrill after all these years (my 25th at Swarthmore)!
Swarthmore campus, with pink flowers in front of a bell tower
photo credit: college web page
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Reposted by Steve Wang
Casey Dunn @caseywdunn.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
My new book, Phylogenetic Biology, is now published. Available online for free at dunnlab.org/phylogenetic... . Physical copies can be purchased at shop.lightningsource.com/b/085?params... or your favorite bookstore.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Sounds amazing. I love his recent piano music (e.g. Finishing the Hat), so I hope I can hear Two Pianos soon.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Wow, two new Reich pieces! He’s certainly not slowing down for a guy who turns 90 in about a month. What are the pieces?
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Good content, but I dislike FAQ pages where you need to expand each question one by one. Just let me read the whole page at once!
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Reposted by Steve Wang
Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The acknowledgements of the 2020 NEJM paper announcing the first results of the Moderna covid-19 vaccine: #Dolly
Title page of the paper, "An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 -- Preliminary Report" in the New England Journal of Medicineacknowledgements of the paper, "An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 -- Preliminary Report" in the New England Journal of Medicine, listing "the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund" as a supporter
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
bsky.app/profile/stev...
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
The acknowledgements of the 2020 NEJM paper announcing the first results of the Moderna covid-19 vaccine: #Dolly
Title page of the paper, "An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 -- Preliminary Report" in the New England Journal of Medicineacknowledgements of the paper, "An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 -- Preliminary Report" in the New England Journal of Medicine, listing "the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund" as a supporter
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
At my first GSA, in the Q&A someone asked if I knew of recent work on a related topic. I thought, “Hey, I read that paper!” and excitedly replied, “You mean the paper by Alroy?” Turns out the guy who asked the question was Alroy, who I had never seen before.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Yankees seem to be playing a lot of games like this lately. Good pitching but little offense with Judge, Bellinger, and Stanton out.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
They're not commonly used for serious analysis because they can be difficult to interpret, but they are sometimes brought up as an innovative and clever idea.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Also, I used to teach at Harvard, and Herman Chernoff was my next-door office neighbor. He gave me an original printout of Chernoff faces printed out on a form-feed printer, which is one of my most prized statistical possession (along with an original copy of "One Million Random Digits").
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Same dataset using standard Chernoff faces:C
Chernoff faces representation of a dataset. There are 12 cartoonish faces; each facial feature (such as hair, smile, nose, eyes, ears) represents a variable in a dataset.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
We ran some tests using AMT and got mixed results. It was not clear that the photorealistic faces worked better than standard Chernoff faces. I think it's still a neat idea, though. collaborators: Jessica Todd Harper (photographer), Heidi Wong (Photoshop), Sebastian Mintah (AMT survey)
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Chernoff faces (CF) are supposed to work because humans are good at distinguishing sutble features in faces. However, CF in their original 1973 implementation don't actually look like real faces, which might weaken any perceptual cues. So we tried to make faces that actually look like actual faces.
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Reposted by Steve Wang
Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
My students/collaborators and I came up with photorealistic Chernoff faces a few years ago and ran some experiments, but I haven't had time to write up a manuscript yet. Here's a sample: @bbolker.bsky.social @datavisfriendly.bsky.social #rstats #stats #dataviz #AcademicSky 🧪
sample of photorealistic Chernoff faces developed by Steve Wang, Heidi Wong, Sebastian Mintah, and Jessica Todd Harper of Swarthmore College. Figure shows 12 variations of a face with different hair, eyes, face shape, beard, etc. Facial features represent variables in a multivariate dataset. This builds on the idea of Herman Chernoff, but using photorealistic faces instead of cartoon-like faces.
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Reposted by Steve Wang
Michael Friendly @datavisfriendly.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #Onthisday #OTD 📊 🎂Jul 01, 1923 Herman Chernoff born in New York, USA 🇺🇸 1973: Cartoons of human face to represent multivariate data -- idea that people are sensitive to configural properties of faces. 'Chernoff face' displays: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernof...
en.wikipedia.org
Chernoff face - Wikipedia
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
My students/collaborators and I came up with photorealistic Chernoff faces a few years ago and ran some experiments, but I haven't had time to write up a manuscript yet. Here's a sample: @bbolker.bsky.social @datavisfriendly.bsky.social #rstats #stats #dataviz #AcademicSky 🧪
sample of photorealistic Chernoff faces developed by Steve Wang, Heidi Wong, Sebastian Mintah, and Jessica Todd Harper of Swarthmore College. Figure shows 12 variations of a face with different hair, eyes, face shape, beard, etc. Facial features represent variables in a multivariate dataset. This builds on the idea of Herman Chernoff, but using photorealistic faces instead of cartoon-like faces.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
The fossil species was known before the living one was discovered — kind of like a plant version of the coelacanth.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
I use π every day.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Thank you!
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Not sure, I'd have to think about this. It's not a situation I've encountered before. It's unusual in that it mixes a model parameter with observed outcomes.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
FWIW, the Yankees have had 5 starting pitchers on the IL this year (including those initially injured last year but still on the shelf this year): Cole, Fried, Rodon, Schmidt, Gil.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I'm just a hobbyist, but I write percussion music for fun. Here is a percussion sextet done on GarageBand. There are links to live performances in the info. youtu.be/L7ekaRYLS3g
youtu.be
Sextet for Percussion (inspired by Steve Reich and Pat Metheny)
YouTube video by Steve W.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
We applied for access, and they sent an email with a link to download data. The quote is taken from that email.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Yes, photos definitely do not do his work justice.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Post one (1) photo of a painting that you took with your very own hands. One of my favorites, from the National Gallery of Art two weeks ago.
Jackson Pollock: Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
The email we got from WoRMS says, "Please remember that you cannot make the data provided available to third parties".
text of email from WoRMS stating, "Please remember that you cannot make the data provided available to third parties".
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Reposted by Steve Wang
Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Questions about submitting a manuscript to a journal that requires including the data and code: 1) For public databases (eg, PBDB), do you submit the code w/ API calls to download the data, or the downloaded dataset itself? 2) What about datasets that don't allow sharing (eg,WoRMS)? #AcademicSky 🧪 ⚒️
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Questions about submitting a manuscript to a journal that requires including the data and code: 1) For public databases (eg, PBDB), do you submit the code w/ API calls to download the data, or the downloaded dataset itself? 2) What about datasets that don't allow sharing (eg,WoRMS)? #AcademicSky 🧪 ⚒️
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
This policy will increase competition among students instead of fostering collaboration (the latter being what schools should be doing). I'm guessing it will also increase cheating.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Even in airplanes!
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
I loved this game as a kid. We drafted teams and made our own spinner discs using a then-new Mac and ImageWriter.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
For my old plan, myself + spouse was more expensive than the family plan (myself + spouse + kids). Apparently the logic was that if you don’t have kids yet, you might become pregnant, which uses more expenses.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Pluto was less than 3 months old when the Adler Planetarium opened. (Obviously it had been around much longer than that, but Lowell discovered it less than 3 months prior.)
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Did you know Hassett is a Swarthmore grad?
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Great article, thank you
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
That's the lecture hall where I used to teach stats!
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Great interview. I always love your enthusiasm and evident passion for the subject.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
bsky.app/profile/stev...
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Great question. For the shingles vaccine study, they did account for this difference in a clever way: med.stanford.edu/news/all-new...
med.stanford.edu
For those living with dementia, new study suggests shingles vaccine could slow the disease
A new analysis of a vaccination program in Wales found that the shingles vaccine not only appeared to lower new dementia diagnoses by 20%, it also helped those who already have the disease.
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Steve Wang @stevewang251.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
I had no idea he lived until 1987!
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