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Simon P. Couch

@simonpcouch.com

he/him - writing statistical software at Posit, PBC (née RStudio)🥑 simonpcouch.com, @simonpcouch elsewhere

356 Posts3863 Follower211 Folgt
Max kuhn@topepo.bsky.social · last wk.

We're happy to announce our new #rstats package: lorax. If you fit tree-based models, lorax enables conversion to the party package's format (for making nice tree diagrams) and has methods to compute which features were used, the number of terminal nodes, etc. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-07...

Introducing lorax: Speaking for the Tree-Based Models

lorax is a new R package that characterizes fitted tree- and rule-based models: extract their decision rules, see which predictors they actually use, and convert trees for plotting with partykit.

opensource.posit.co

Carlos Scheidegger@cscheid.net · last wk.

I am begging you to talk to other human beings directly, and not through a Claude layer. This goes doubly when I ask you, directly, to talk to me not through a Claude layer. Please.

Tomasz Kalinowski@t-kalinowski.bsky.social · 2w ago

I'm happy to share `ir`, a new command-line tool for running portable R scripts and Quarto documents. It's inspired by my two favorite parts of `uv`: self-describing scripts and tools you can run without installing first. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-07...

ir 0.1.0: self-describing R scripts and Quarto documents

`ir` is a new command-line tool for running portable R scripts and rendering Quarto documents whose package requirements, and optional R selection, live inside the file itself.

opensource.posit.co

Simon P. Couch@simonpcouch.com · 2w ago

Just ran today's Gemini 3.6 Flash release through #rstats bluffbench2. In the ballpark of Gemini 3.5 Flash on performance, slightly (5-10%) cheaper. More on the eval: posit-dev.github.io/bluffbench2/

A bar plot showing scores for several frontier models. The two leaders, Gemini 3.5 Flash and Claude Fable 5, score in the mid-high teens. Gemini 3.6 Flash is around 10%. Models from OpenAI cluster at the bottom, never eclipsing 10%.
Simon P. Couch@simonpcouch.com · 3w ago

We're excited to share bluffbench2, a next-generation data science LLM evaluation. The eval measures how well models notice subtle data quality issues in plots. Even the most capable models today score in the mid-teens. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-07...

Simon P. Couch@simonpcouch.com · 2w ago

One of the more interesting findings to me from this eval is that prematurely adding modeled results (like #rstats geom_smooth()) to plots drastically reduces the chances that models will catch the issue in the plot.

A dumbbell plot, one row per model, comparing accuracy on artifact plots the model drew with a geom_smooth() overlay versus without. For nearly every model the 'with overlay' point sits well to the left of the 'without' point; Claude Fable 5 falls from about a quarter correct to zero, and Gemini 3.5 Flash from about a quarter to under a tenth.
Simon P. Couch@simonpcouch.com · 3w ago

We're excited to share bluffbench2, a next-generation data science LLM evaluation. The eval measures how well models notice subtle data quality issues in plots. Even the most capable models today score in the mid-teens. opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-07...

Simon P. Couch@simonpcouch.com · 3w ago

Was poking around rstudio.org in the Wayback Machine and came across this feature release from April 2011 (the second release of the IDE!)... `manipulate()` "enables you to create plots with inputs bound to custom controls (e.g. slider, picker, etc.)" #rstats

Blog post header reading 'RStudio Beta 2 (v0.93),' posted April 11, 2011 in News by jjallaire with 32 comments. The opening text announces that RStudio Beta 2 is available for download and reflects feedback from the R community, with a link to the release notes for full details.Section titled 'Interactive Plotting' describing manipulate, a new feature for creating plots with inputs bound to custom controls like sliders, pickers, and checkboxes instead of fixed values. Below the description is an R code example using manipulate() to plot the 'cars' dataset with an x.max slider, a type picker (Points/Line/Step), and a Draw Labels checkbox. A screenshot shows this in action within RStudio: a 'Manipulate' control panel on the left with an x.max slider set to 25, a 'type' dropdown set to Points, and a checked 'Draw Labels' box, alongside a scatterplot of distance versus speed on the right.
Pam Herd@pamherd.bsky.social · 3w ago

Key point with this piece is that Mandami is pushing back against the McKinsey approach to governing. Alondra Nelson actually put this best: "How a City interacts with its people shouldn’t be outsourced. It should be local and accountable."

Done right, digital government can help millions of people save hundreds of millions of dollars, and hours and hours of time. Done wrong, it can be costly, useless, discriminatory or even dangerous. How a City interacts with its people shouldn’t be outsourced. It should be local and accountable.
Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 3w ago

New w @pamherd.bsky.social: Mamdani just announced PIT Crew — an NYC tech unit that will build digital public products. Takeaway: Mamdani is reclaiming a vision of tech in govt for progressives, one not driven by consultants and which solves real problems. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/mamdani-in...

Hadley Wickham@hadley.nz · last mo.

A coding agent is only useful if it can run whatever code the task demands, but a tool that runs arbitrary code is just as dangerous as it sounds! So how do you stop an agent from making mistakes you can't easily undo? Read more at: tidydesign.substack.com/p/help-my-co...

Help! My coding agent can run code

A coding agent is only actually useful if it can run whatever code the task demands, but a tool that runs arbitrary code is just as dangerous as it sounds! So how do you protect ourself with guardrail...

tidydesign.substack.com

Simon P. Couch@simonpcouch.com · 2mo ago

It seems like LLMs are getting much better at faithfully describing data visualizations that show surprising trends. With @sara-altman.bsky.social on the @posit.co open source blog: opensource.posit.co/blog/2026-06...

AI Newsletter: LLMs are getting much better at interpreting counterintuitive plots

Model releases from the last couple months have shown a large jump in capability on our bluffbench eval, which measures agents' ability to faithfully describe plots showing surprising results.

opensource.posit.co