Nature: "The interaction between sex and sleep duration approached nominal significance (P3 = 0.06), indicating a potential trend toward sex-specific associations. " God help us 🤣

R version 4.6.0 "Because it was There" (source version) has been released. It should be on CRAN by now. #rstats The choice of codename is in remembrance of R Core member Tomàš Kalibera (1978-2026). Among many other things, he was a keen mountain climber.

SORTEE Canada Chapter Join us for an informal online brainstorming session(s) to share ideas, and help shape future local activities! 🇨🇦 To register, please fill in the Expression of interest form on our website: sortee.org/chapters/ 📩

New blog post about R4.6 #rstats www.jumpingrivers.com/blog/whats-n...

What's new in R 4.6.0?

Here we summarise some of the more interesting changes in the April 2026 release of R 4.6.0.

jumpingrivers.com

In “Six Memos for the Next Millenium”, Italo Calvino distilled six literary virtues he felt should endure regardless of how the world changed. As we enter an age of automated evaluation & production of science, what are the parallel epstemic virtues we should try to preserve? We want your input! 🧵

This is very cool and I'm absolutely going to bother everyone around me with it

Epistemic Virtues for Science in the Age of Automation statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/04/14/e...

I now have a primitive interactive browser interface to the workflow graph. I can get this to support an interactive design mode I think. I just want to say, and let me be very clear so that no one misunderstands: javascript f'ing sucks.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛@rmcelreath.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Type system in place and mostly working. Here is workflow graph with logically implied but missing nodes shown in the dashed boxes.

"The publishers are – so to speak – having their cake whilst also eating it."

Richard Sever@richardsever.bsky.social · 4mo ago

CRUK goes green [OA] news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/w...

[R]eflecting on the harms of AI is not itself harm reduction. It may even contribute to rationalizing, normalizing, and enabling harm. Critical reflection without appropriate action is thus quintessentially critical washing. Marcela Suárez et al. (2025, par. 7)."

I'm teaching git again this year at @csee-scee.bsky.social's 2026 meeting in Toronto. Motivated by the recent announcements on Copilot training, this will be my first time teaching an alternative for remote storage: Codeberg! This below is just another example of the slop we shouldn't accept.

I think we need to celebrate the death of Sora a bit more. This is a technology that, just MONTHS AGO, we were being told was going to literally destroy Hollywood and Disney was going to give them a BILLION DOLLARS and NONE OF THAT EVEN REMOTELY HAPPENED

"The uncritical adoption of AI can lead to students not developing essential academic skills such as critical thinking and writing." www.ru.nl/en/research/...

‘Opposing the inevitability of AI at universities is possible and necessary’ | Radboud University

Since the widespread release of ChatGPT in December of 2022, AI has taken over much of the world by storm – including academia. Most of this happened with very little pushback, despite a myriad of iss...

ru.nl

First thing that comes to mind is: could it be a new fun way to teach R?

James Balamuta@coatless.bsky.social · 5mo ago

This IS the droid you're looking for. webRoid v1.0.0: R on Android. Console, editor, plots, packages, 9 themes. No server required. Tested extensively on emulators. Your actual device? The Force is strong, but no promises. play.google.com/store/apps/d... #rstats #webR #Android #WebAssembly

@science.org should have higher standards than this unserious, click bait op-ed.

Meade Krosby@meadekrosby.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Some people should never have access to students. “AI requires no ramp-ups, no meetings, and absolutely no emotional support…The issue is not whether my students are valuable. In long run, they are invaluable. The issue is that their value emerges slowly, whereas AI delivers immediate returns.”

"The Grad Student Who Never Said 'No'" was a blog post by Brian Wansink in which he praised a grad student for coming up with new ways to reanalyze the data. This attracted quite a bit of attention which eventually led to Wansink's downfall: www.npr.org/sections/the...

The Grad Student Who Never Said "No"

Addendum   Good discussion on this post.  Here are two key clarifications to make about data analysis and about the stressed-out workloads of post-docs.   P-hacking and MTurk-iterating isn’t...

web.archive.org

It's only p-hacking when it comes from the p-region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling deep data dives.

A super useful and comprehensive summary! #ReproducibleCode

Natalie Cooper@nhcooper123.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Excited to launch the new improved Reproducible Code guide from @britishecologicalsociety.org @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social FREE online here! www.britishecologicalsociety.org//wp-content/... Amazing work by some very talented ECRs. We hope it’s useful!

Which makes me think, does anyone have tips on how to run a successful book club on a textbook like Statistical Rethinking? We'll be meeting every two weeks, following Richard's older schedule at half speed. Different folks would sign up to lead the discussion. Mix of faculty and grad students.

Val. Lucet@vlucet.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Next semester I'm organizing a Statistical Rethinking book club for the bio dpt at @carleton.ca Interestingly we also decided to progress at half speed. This new 2 sections idea will be perfect if I ever decide to run future iterations of that book club (gotta learn the material first though!)

Next semester I'm organizing a Statistical Rethinking book club for the bio dpt at @carleton.ca Interestingly we also decided to progress at half speed. This new 2 sections idea will be perfect if I ever decide to run future iterations of that book club (gotta learn the material first though!)

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛@rmcelreath.bsky.social · 8mo ago

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...

"The CSU isn’t investing in education—it’s outsourcing it, paying premium prices for a chatbot many students were already using for free."

Jeremy Yoder says no war@jbyoder.org · 8mo ago

Absolutely devastating account of the CSU's $17 million capitulation to ChatGPT, from a fellow faculty member watching it happen www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

The scientist-statistician was one of the most common professions in 21st century universities. In this era, statistics was seldom conducted by trained statisticians. Instead, subject experts, who possessed hard- and software, were responsible for tasks ranging from study design to causal inference

#OTD in 1967, Jocelyn Bell discovered pulsars & changed our view of the universe. 𝘉𝘶𝘵... The #Nobel Prize in #Physics for their discovery went to to her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish & to astronomer Martin Ryle. theconversation.com/fifty-years-... #WomenInSTEM #astrophysics #MatildaEffect

I love the JBB story for a few reasons: - stringing 120 miles of wire - months of analzying paper roll data - her PI was like "that can't be right, do it again," the motto of PI's everywhere. - rare case of a landmark discovery becoming ubiquitous in popular culture for no particular reason

Carve Her Name@carvehername.bsky.social · 8mo ago

#OnThisDay, 28 Nov 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers the existence of pulsars - a new type of star. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM 🗃️ 1/2

Tomorrow I'll have the pleasure of teaching version control to @carleton.ca ecology undergrads As a preamble, to drive the importance of professional tools for doing professional science, I've stolen @rmcelreath.bsky.social's entire lesson on the topic Of course, there will be classical memes

Marvel: "infinity war is the most ambitious crossover event in history" McElreath, Gelman & Vehtari:

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛@rmcelreath.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Yes - on track for next year

I had to check what I recommend in my book. And Poison priors (right) are also cursed. I'm working on something new with Gelman and Vehtari, so will make a note to review our examples for some consistency in these contexts.

Yup, I've found this same need for periodic re-teaching of those fundamental concepts (both to myself and to others). I spent an hour yesterday reinforcing to a student the idea that smaller p-values != stronger effects, and that p-value = P(data | NH true) and not P(NH true | data).

Mattan S. Ben-Shachar@mattansb.msbstats.info · 9mo ago

It's really interesting - I'm fairly confident I teach p-values right. Yet when I meet students a year later, their understanding is corrupted by the world around them, and they need to be realigned (this phenomenon predates LLMs).

Very much looking forward to this, and more than happy to support a good cause

Michael "Shapes Dude" Betancourt@betanalpha.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Did I tweak nearly every slide of my regression deck in preparation for next month’s charity course? Only one way to find out! Join us by dropping a 50 USD donation to World Central Kitchen or United Farm Workers. A few sponsored spots available. Details at betanalpha.github.io/courses/.