On Thursday, I'm giving the last of the 2026 Ihaka lectures on "Spotting the weird ones" (about anomaly detection using #rstats). It's an honour to speak at something named after Ross Ihaka. It will be live-streamed for those who can't be there. www.auckland.ac.nz/en/science/a...

I couldn't find the exact annotated plot of total US oil stocks I wanted, so I had to make my own. At the rate of decline since its recent peak, there are 19 weeks left to having 30 days cover of refinery needs. Blog with #rstats code at freerangestats.info/blog/2026/08...

I guess the 'Infantino for UN Secretary-General' campaign has hit a snag.

"Guilty pleasure" presumes I feel any guilt about it.

I've open-sourced a web service container that will give you a WorldPop population count anywhere on earth given a point (100x100m), a point + radius, or a geojson polygon. It's using R2025A at the moment, but can change as needed. github.com/InternetSoci...

GitHub - InternetSociety/wpopapi: API for accessing WorldPop data

API for accessing WorldPop data. Contribute to InternetSociety/wpopapi development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Pacific Data Visualisation Challenge pacificdatavizchallenge.org

He fit the same statistical models with three different software and got much different estimates. It’s another dimension of the multiverse. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/07/27/5...

Why is an independent test/train split not good enough to prevent 'leakage'? Was Neyman wrong? notstatschat.rbind.io/2026/07/27/d...

Very sad that Bill Oddie has passed away. The Goodies at 5.30 or 6pm are an indelible part of my childhood memories.

A very very thoughtful post about AI and the experience of having to use it

Danielle Navarro@djnavarro.net · last wk.

not literally about cocaine

This week on my substack: a write up of my talk "y code when ai" (my thoughts on why knowing how to code is still relevant), along with a brief description of how I turned a video of my talk into this post. Read it at open.substack.com/pub/tidydesi... !

y code when ai?

A talk on AI and coding

open.substack.com

Oil at the storage and distribution hub in Cushing, Oklahoma has gone down below 20 million barrels again.

The chronological setting of the Odyssey really is, effectively, 'nowhen.' It is absolutely set in the past, but not in a specific, dateable past. Present tense (for Homer) stuff shows up, truly ancient s*** (for Homer) shows up. Also giants, monsters, giant monsters and straight-up divinities.

Generally this sort of data is good for extra timeliness or granularity (spatial or otherwise) but needs regular calibration to the more traditional representative sources, if it is to be used for official statistics.

Erika McEntarfer@erikamcentarfer.bsky.social · 2w ago

GS points out that (data task force member) Chetty's alternative economic indicator series has performed rather poorly since the pandemic, highlighting the challenges in using non-representative data

The extent of the 1666 Great Fire of London superimposed over modern London. (By @Julian_H0ffmann) www.julian-hoffmann-anton.com/networks-and...

Speaking of which, I am in the market for the latest in what people regard as good introductions to Git and GitHub. Ideally a short course with some kind of rigour (online quizzes etc). One that doesn't mention graph theory but focuses on the basics for users.

Discussing whether I'm right to insist people get up to speed with GitHub before using AI to improve their code. Someone suggested I am advocating learning XXX by hand rather than computer, but it is more like insisting you get the hang of track changes before letting AI re-write your report.

Kind of staggered to come across current university course notes (for a third year course!) saying that simple random sampling requires the population to be normally distributed to work, and that non-normal distributions are why we sometimes use stratified sampling.

So it seems the only place in the southern hemisphere to see The Odyssey properly (IMAX 70mm) is in Melbourne, ironically about 300m from where I used to live in Fitzroy. How much of a compromise is it to see in a regular cinema?

That's not to say climate change is over and we can declare victory but the path to zero carbon is now extremely obvious and achievable and its mostly a matter of time (and how much damage we inflict along the way) rather than an existential danger we might not solve.

Work colleague back in the Pacific after travelling in Europe mentioned they had a 15 degrees Celsius drop coming from Germany to Fiji.

Just published in Survey Practice - The Politics of Survey Participation: Political Engagement, Polarization, and Panel Attrition 1980–2020 www.surveypractice.org/article/1614...

The Politics of Survey Participation: Political Engagement, Polarization, and Panel Attrition 1980–2020 | Published in Survey Practice

By Judd Thornton, Stephany Dejesus Lina. Do politically relevant variables predict completion of the second wave of political surveys? We examine the relationship between panel attrition and measures…

surveypractice.org

Sam Neill’s 20 best roles

Sam Neill’s 20 best roles

The New Zealand actor, who has died at the age of 78, delivered stellar performances for more than 40 years. Here’s our pick of his best roles Scientists, farmers, spies, cops, priests, the devil incarnate: Sam Neill delivered cracking performances for more than four decades. Before the death of the New Zealand actor on Monday at the age of 78, Luke Buckmaster looked back at his career and ranked his 20 all-time greatest performances. Continue reading...

theguardian.com

Vale Sam Neill, New Zealand's top movie scientist and by all accounts a lovely man. Genuinely bereft - he was one of the best of us.

The impact of AI on jobs is uncertain. What is certain: assessment of job-creation/destruction by tech company CEOs should be heavily discounted, or ignored altogether. Tech CEOs have no insights in labor economics, and have bad incentives on this issue.

Just discovered an annoying user experience with Office/Copilot between them turning down my room booking (for my own office!) and automatically booking another - in its view, 'similar' - room instead. And there is no way to turn this behaviour off by default, only for individual meetings.

While there isn't timely, detailed info on national fuel use, if March-May petrol prices are up an average of 30% and Diesel up an average of 73%, then electronic card spending on fuel being only up 17% means that even if we don't know the proportion of fuel being sold, there is a lot less sold

For me the saddest part is the death of Stack Overflow, which was an internet marvel of the same sort as Wikipedia. The idea of replacing so much human interaction with each of us individually typing into solipsistic web forms and terminal prompts is depressing as hell.