Rob Cavanaugh
@rbcavanaugh.bsky.social
Assistant Professor in quantitative methods @mghinstitute, speech-language pathologist by training. Enthusiastic about quantitative methods in rehabilitation research and health services research for aphasia. 🥾🏔️🦮🍕
Big news! 🎉 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚏𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚜 1.0.0 for #Rstats is out. It’s a big number and it feels like a big step. I wrote a blog on the challenges of interpreting statistical models, SPEED, cool new features, the future, and a 5 year package development and writing odyssey. arelbundock.com/posts/margin...
S8E01 The True Crimes of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing Patrick and Greg find it deeply unfair that the podcast hasn’t grown popular enough to fund a Quantitude jet. So they try to make it a true crime podcast, and revisit the case of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing.
The American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology is seeking an Editor-in-Chief for Acquired Language & Cognitive Communication. We're accepting applications from people with strong editorial leadership & expertise. Email CV to kgnanasekhar@asha.org by 7/24.
New interactive blog! "Why Adjusted Regression Coefficients Are Less Descriptive Than They Look" rpsychologist.com/descriptive-...
A new paper by @dominiquemakowski.bsky.social, @mattansb.msbstats.info, me and colleagues just out! We show how to choose informative priors in Bayesian regression models using a systematic simulation study and a practical step-by-step tutorial in #Rstats and #Stan! doi.org/10.3389/fpsy... >
Pssst: to those interested in #aphasia and #storytelling I am giving my inaugural at @citystgeorges.bsky.social on Wednesday 10 June. Please come! Register here for details: www.citystgeorges.ac.uk/news-and-eve...
citystgeorges.ac.uk
I've made an R package for Bayesian Rasch #psychometrics with brms models, easyRaschBayes (on CRAN), implementing simple functions to create figures and tables with model fit metrics, etc. Attaching figures from conditional item infit, item-restscore with GK gamma, and the log-likelihood criterion.
Good news everyone 🥳 Our (w @vincentab.bsky.social) primer on models as prediction machines (with the marginaleffects package) is finally officially published!> journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Models as Prediction Machines: How to Convert Confusing Coefficients Into Clear Quantities - Julia M. Rohrer, Vincent Arel-Bundock, 2026
Psychological researchers usually make sense of regression models by interpreting coefficient estimates directly. This works well enough for simple linear model...
journals.sagepub.com
New preprint exploring how conceptual representations can be decoded in people with aphasia using fMRI. Grateful for an exciting collaboration with @jerrytang.bsky.social, @alexanderhuth.bsky.social, @smwilson.bsky.social!
@jerrytang.bsky.social · 5mo agoWe're excited to share our new study on decoding brain activity in participants with post-stroke aphasia! We think this is an important step towards cognitive brain-computer interfaces for patients with language disorders www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/8
📣 The 2026 SMaRT Workshops schedule is officially LIVE — with workshops covering SEM, MLM, dyadic methods, time series, machine learning, clinical trials design, and more. STATS NERD SUMMER is HERE. Come learn something. 🧑🎓 smart-workshops.com/workshops Please share and RP🙏 More info 👇 1/n
Workshops — SMaRT Workshops
smart-workshops.com
🚨 New Blog Post 🚨 I wrote my very first blog post 😊 This post is for quantitative researchers working with negatively worded Likert-scale items and haven't heard that these items can cause problems. I outline key issues, describe alternatives, and recommend lit. yannicmeier.de/2026/03/03/w...
Why reversed items can be problematic in survey research
In quantitative psychological research, questionnaires with Likert-style items are mostly used to assess variables like emotions, cognitions, and dispositions. Sometimes, it is possible to fall bac…
yannicmeier.de
I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
Folks who teach stats to graduate students in applied fields - do you discuss ordinal methods in depth? The Liddell and Kruschke paper? (Analyzing ordinal data with metric models: What could possibly go wrong?) What do you recommend to students who often use ordinal outcomes? #statssky
Nice one, from @drg.bsky.social and @jamesheathers.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...
“Cake causes herpes?” - promiscuous dichotomisation induces false positives - BMC Medical Research Methodology
Background Continuous biomedical data is often dichotomized into two or more groups for analysis, despite long-standing warnings from statisticians that this constitutes bad practice. This dichotomisa...
link.springer.com
We wrote an article explaining why you shouldn't put several variables into a regression model and report which are statistically significant - even as exploratory research. bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/.... How did we do?
We need to have a conversation about random seeds. Don't use 42. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/if-your-ra...
If your random seed is 42 I will come to your office and set your computer on fire🔥
Figuratively. More likely you'll get a stern talking to.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com
Any #rstats folks know the differences in lme4::glmer()'s specification for aggregated binomials? (or reading rec's?) I'd like to confirm my understanding of these: cbind(successes, failures) ~ ... successes/trials ~ ..., weights = trials successes/trials ~ ..., weights = NULL (or unspecified)
"How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner" by Annie Mueller 😅 😂 😭 anniemueller.com/posts/how-i-...
How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner - annie's blog
“Hello! I am a developer. Here is my relevant experience: I code in Hoobijag and sometimes jabbernocks and of course ABCDE++++ (but never ABCDE+/^+ are you kidding? ha!) and I like working with ...
anniemueller.com
Join us Monday, September 15th from 4:00 pm to 5:00 pm ET for a talk by Simona Mancini, Ikerbasque Research Associate Professor / Neurolinguistics and Aphasia group leader at the Basque Center on Cognition Brain and Language. Register now at https://bit.ly/45LjrF1
Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life? Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social) Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf... Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...
New #rstats blog up! solomonkurz.netlify.app/blog/2025-07... This is the first in a new series discussing causal inference with experimental data using multilevel models. My basic case is g-computation is the way to go.
Within-person factorial experiments, log(normal) reaction-time data | A. Solomon Kurz
Causal inference with the GLMM, Part 1
solomonkurz.netlify.app
How can we reform science? I have some ideas. But I am not sure you’ll like them, because they don’t promise much. elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...
Which Kind of Science Reform
What hope is there for science reform, if we can't agree on what to reform? Right now, principles are more important than practices.
elevanth.org
Had a great time sharing about our test-retest, #multimodal #communication #aphasia & peer dataset at the University of Technology Sydney Graduate School of Health seminar series today. Join AphasiaBank (totally free) and get full access to our data! aphasia.talkbank.org/access/Engli...
Funding curves for K and F mechanisms (Warning: the new F mechanism "curve" is a lot)
a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card
ALT: a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card
media.tenor.com
Hey #rstats friends. I’m looking for examples of papers or posts that do a really really good job unpacking/writing about/explaining statistical results. Not just technically correct but also clear. Bonus points for using marginal effects. What’s your go to exemplar for students new to research?
New blog post! In which I explain the issue with mediation analysis and sketch out one way to deal with the underlying causal inference problem -- in just a bit over 1,000 words! If you have never found the time to read up on this, now is your chance. www.the100.ci/2025/03/20/r...
Reviewer notes: That’s a very nice mediation analysis you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.
Mediation analysis has gotten a lot of flak, including classic titles such as “Yes, but what’s the mechanism? (Don’t expect an easy answer)” (Bullock et al., 2010), “What mediation analysis can (not) ...
the100.ci
Bsky/Academia friends - any suggestions on time tracking software? Criteria: I want to spend as little time as possible actually tracking my time. Bonus if integrated with outlook. Doesn’t need to be exact. I’m just hoping for a reasonable estimate of research/teaching/service breakdown.
NIH cuts are getting the press, but VA research is getting slashed too. What do we lose when VA research goes away? Here's some greatest hits: The nicotine patch, invention of the cardiac pacemaker, first successful liver transplant, development of the CAT/CT scan prospect.org/health/2025-...
VA Research Funding Slashed
Though not as prominent as the NIH, VA researchers play a major role in advancing basic health science. Hundreds of projects have been cut.
prospect.org
