(This is Dan) Last September, Jonah, Aki, Michael, Andrew and I wrote a paper on the role of visualization in the Bayesian workflow. This paper is going to be published as a discussion paper in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A and the associated read paper meeting (where we present the paper and […]
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One good and one bad response to statistics’ diversity problem
(This is Dan) As conference season rolls into gear, I thought I’d write a short post contrasting some responses by statistical societies to the conversation that the community has been having about harassment of women and minorities at workshops and conferences. ISI: Do what I say, not what I do Let’s look at a different diversity […]
Zero-excluding priors are probably a bad idea for hierarchical variance parameters
(This is Dan, but in quick mode) I was on the subway when I saw Andrew’s last post and it doesn’t strike me as a particularly great idea. So let’s take a look at the suggestion for 8 schools using a centred parameterization. This is not as comprehensive as doing a proper simulation study, but […]
You better check yo self before you wreck yo self
We (Sean Talts, Michael Betancourt, Me, Aki, and Andrew) just uploaded a paper (code available here) that outlines a framework for verifying that an algorithm for computing a posterior distribution has been implemented correctly. It is easy to use, straightforward to implement, and ready to be implemented as part of a Bayesian workflow. This type of […]
Justify my love
When everyone starts walking around the chilly streets of Toronto looking like they’re cosplaying the last 5 minutes of Call Me By Your Name, you know that Spring is in the air. Let’s celebrate the end of winter by pulling out our Liz Phair records, our slightly less-warm coats, and our hunger for long reads […]
What is not but could be if
And if I can remain there I will say – Baby Dee Obviously this is a blog that love the tabloids. But as we all know, the best stories are the ones that confirm your own prior beliefs (because those must be true). So I’m focussing on this article in Science that talks about how STEM […]
Anybody want a drink before the war?
Your lallies look like darts, and you’ve got nanti carts, but I love your bona eke – Lee Sutton (A near miss) I’ve been thinking about gayface again. I guess this is for a bunch of reasons, but one of the lesser ones is that this breathless article by JD Schramm popped up in the Washington Post the other […]
Eid ma clack shaw zupoven del ba.
When I say “I love you”, you look accordingly skeptical – Frida Hyvönen A few years back, Bill Callahan wrote a song about the night he dreamt the perfect song. In a fever, he woke and wrote it down before going back to sleep. The next morning, as he struggled to read his handwriting, he saw […]
The difference between me and you is that I’m not on fire
“Eat what you are while you’re falling apart and it opened a can of worms. The gun’s in my hand and I know it looks bad, but believe me I’m innocent.” – Mclusky While the next episode of Madam Secretary buffers on terrible hotel internet, I (the other other white meat) thought I’d pop in […]
Now, Andy did you hear about this one?
We drank a toast to innocence, we drank a toast to now. We tried to reach beyond the emptiness but neither one knew how. – Kiki and Herb Well I hope you all ended your 2017 with a bang. Mine went out on a long-haul flight crying so hard at a French AIDS drama that […]
We need to stop sacrificing women on the altar of deeply mediocre men (ISBA edition)
(This is not Andrew. I would ask you not to speculate in the comments who S is, this is not a great venue for that.) Kristian Lum just published an essay about her experiences being sexually assaulted at statistics conferences. You should read the whole thing because it’s important, but there’s a sample paragraph. I […]
Always crashing in the same car
“Hey, remember me? I’ve been busy working like crazy” – Fever Ray I’m at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) for the week, which is basically a Canadian version of Disneyland where during coffee breaks a Canadian woman with a rake politely walks around telling elk to “shoo”. The topic of this week’s workshop isn’t […]
Asymptotically we are all dead (Thoughts about the Bernstein-von Mises theorem before and after a Diamanda Galás concert)
They say I did something bad, then why’s it feel so good–Taylor Swift It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m trying to work myself up to the sort of emotional fortitude where I can survive the Diamanda Galás concert that I was super excited about a few months ago, but now, as I stare down the […]
Teeth are the only bones that show
“I lived in the country where the dead wood aches, in a house made of stone and a thousand mistakes” – The Drones Sometimes it’s cold and grey and Canadian outside and the procrastination hits hard. Sometimes, in those dark moments, one is tempted to fire up the social media and see what’s happening in […]
Why won’t you cheat with me?
But I got some ground rules I’ve found to be sound rules and you’re not the one I’m exempting. Nonetheless, I confess it’s tempting. – Jenny Toomey sings Franklin Bruno It turns out that I did something a little controversial in last week’s post. As these things always go, it wasn’t the thing I was […]
The king must die
“And then there was Yodeling Elaine, the Queen of the Air. She had a dollar sign medallion about as big as a dinner plate around her neck and a tiny bubble of spittle around her nostril and a little rusty tear, for she had lassoed and lost another tipsy sailor“– Tom Waits It turns out I turned […]
Contour as a verb
Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania – The Mountain Goats (In which I am uncharacteristically brief) Andrew’s answer to recent post reminded me of one of my favourite questions: how do you visualise uncertainty in spatial maps. An interesting subspecies of this question relates to exactly how you can plot a contour […]
Barry Gibb came fourth in a Barry Gibb look alike contest
Every day a little death, in the parlour, in the bed. In the lips and in the eyes. In the curtains in the silver, in the buttons, in the bread, in the murmurs, in the gestures, in the pauses, in the sighs. – Sondheim The most horrible sound in the world is that of a […]
It seemed to me that most destruction was being done by those who could not choose between the two
Amateurs, dilettantes, hacks, cowboys, clones — Nick Cave [Note from Dan 11Sept: I wanted to leave some clear air after the StanCon reminder, so I scheduled this post for tomorrow. Which means you get two posts (one from me, one from Andrew) on this in two days. That’s probably more than the gay face study deserves.] […]
Touch me, I want to feel your data.
(This is not a paper we wrote by mistake.) (This is also not Andrew) (This is also really a blog about an aspect of the paper, which mostly focusses on issues around visualisation and how visualisation can improve workflow. So you should read it.) Recently Australians have been living through a predictably ugly debate around […]