David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

I give 15m but usually all done beforehand. Done in lab/discussion section, TAs photograph all the little bubble answer sheets w/ phone, upload to gradescope, and all get autograded. My class is like 120 students so process has to scale.

Although individually low-stakes, cumulatively students must pass a high percentage of the quizzes to pass the class. I use spec grading so that they can't use points in other categories of assessment to substitute

More constant but lower-stakes formative assessments. My course has short (3 q) pass/fail, multiple choice, in-person quizzes every week. But students can retake (another version of) them some weeks later to get the credit back upon fail.

Look, we’re both very sorry about the widening gyre.

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

Just. Reduce. Child. Poverty.

They've lost the 9yos

I only ever heard second-hand from my German relatives what the 1930s were like but it sounded like this. You see the story, it feels wrong, but everyone else around you is just carrying on, shopping, working, going to the cinema. So you do the same. Keep your head down, maybe this is fine? Normal?

I always pay attention to what stories People Magazine and other consumer media outlets cover. That's how you can tell that something has broken through the usual political and news bubbles. This horrific Chicago story has broken through. people.com/ice-agents-o...

Asking “is the postal service profitable?” is a new thing

If you visit a 1950s post office it looks like a Greek temple. They have statues of eagles. There’s a big mural of a flying woman holding a cornucopia. They didn’t whine “is the bronze bas-relief of Prosperity profitable?”

This op-ed is excellent and I encourage everyone to read it.

Universities must reject the Trump compact.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

I guess my point is it’s unphysical concepts all the way down. But for some reason people really don’t like this one in particular.

Sure, it’s not the only way to frame causal inference, but I’m not sure it’s inherently worse. Different frameworks mostly emphasize different sets of priorities.

I don't believe the number 2 is "real" but I use it all the time.

Literally bragging about sending gestapo into American cities with weapons of war to bust down doors & drag residents out of their beds because they’re Latino.

F*cking psychopaths

The regime’s new proposed “compact” with universities — conditioning federal funds on giving up academic freedom & free speech & throwing trans & non-US students under the bus — is unconstitutional.

Every university must reject it. It’s classic hang together or hang separately.

@jeffhamilton.bsky.social how did you know this is the content I crave

Not that I remember! :)

Omg

Using external data in trials can up power, but also bias. Some of my previous papers have tackled this, zeroing bias at the cost of power. In new work, we take the opposite fork: gaining max power and taking the bias hit, but with a rigorous way to protect from that bias.

arxiv.org/abs/2507.18876

CTML GSRs Wenxin Zhang, Kaiwen Hou, and Alissa Gordon will be presenting their work next week at the 2025 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM). Innovations in causal inference, adaptive study design, and statistical methodology will be highlighted.
If you’re attending JSM—come show your support!

A nice recent article on why you should abandon hazard ratios.

#statssky #episky

Just to be clear, this is a violation of the fundamental ethical principle in clinical trial design called "equipoise."

Equipoise means that no-one is exposed to excess risk just to test the therapy. That's specifically *why* vaccine trials don't use placebo arms.

Ethical violation as POLICY.

what the fuck are you talking about how dare you talk shit about A Moon Shaped Pool