Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛
LightNews LightNews
banner
rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛
@rmcelreath.bsky.social
17K followers 1.3K following 1.1K posts

Anthropologist - Bayesian modeling - science reform - cat and cooking content too - Director @ MPI for evolutionary anthropology https://www.eva.mpg.de/ecology/staff/richard-mcelreath/

Videos

Richard McElreath is an American professor of anthropology and a director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is an author of the Statistical Rethinking applied Bayesian statistics textbook, among the first to largely rely on the Stan statistical environment, and the accompanying rethinking R language package. .. more

Psychology 22%
Sociology 21%
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · Sep 19
If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 13h
no thread mentioning thanksgiving turkeys complete without bsky.app/profile/cpsc...
cpsc.gov U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission @cpsc.gov · 2d
There is a post circulating on Bluesky encouraging the moving of a frozen turkey straight into a pot of hot oil. We are combating this misinformation the best way we know how - through the power of dance music.

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 13h
apparently i cannot spell "buffalo" - baffulo looks fine to me

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 13h
there's a place in my neighborhood that serves buffola burgers, which are great, but I think they must be Polish buffola

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 13h
were american bison domesticated at all? they are pretty easy to ranch

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 13h
is it odd that the Americas produced so many great plant domesticates — potatoes, chilis, avocados, corn, chocolate — but few good animal domesticates? guinea pugs, llama, turkey-cocks, a few surviving dog breeds (husky?)

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 14h
in anticipation of turkey defenders
a man in a tuxedo is asking why are you booing me i 'm right
ALT: a man in a tuxedo is asking why are you booing me i 'm right
media.tenor.com

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 14h
ppl are saying blueskey is boring so here is my cat Mischka inspecting a frozen duck. this is for thanksgiving - finding a quality turkey in Germany is not easy. But since turkey is an angry trash bird, a succulent duck will do just fine
picture of a cat inspecting a packaged frozen duck

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 17h
I explain this trick in my online lectures - lecture 13 40min: youtu.be/sgqMkZeslxA?...

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 17h
done and done - problem was strong posterior curvature (phrasing!) so I refactored the priors and now all smooth

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 17h
The quote in the dashboard is from renowned American statistician O'Shea Jackson

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 17h
A mentee sent me this broken chain and imma fix. This will be my one completed task of the day, shining high above dark swamp of collapsed scientific construction sites lurking beneath the clouds of bureaucracy!

Reposted by Richard McElreath

ctennie.bsky.social
Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 21h
I had not seen this before. Very interesting, by Jane Goodall - taken from the transcipt of this interview: freakonomics.com/podcast/jane...
"LEVITT: I think it’s fair to say that the most impactful single insight from your early work is that the chimps in the wild use tools. They make tools. They take objects and intentionally alter those objects to make them better at accomplishing a task. Like stripping away at blades of grass until they’re just right for dipping into the anthills. And before you observed that, there was a thought that humans were the only species that made these tools. To you personally, is that the most notable insight? GOODALL: When I started in 1960, nobody had studied chimps in the wild. No scientist, that is. If, at that time you had gone into some of the indigenous people living deep in the rainforest, they would’ve told you chimpanzees used to make tools. They knew it. But, of course, now we are back on the scientific bandwagon. So when I saw David Greybeard using and making tools, I knew it was really exciting. It was what enabled Leakey to go to the Geographic to get funding when my six months of money ran out. But there’s a wonderful book written by a psychologist, called The Mentality of Apes, Wolfgang Köhler, and he studied this colony of captive apes, and he described so many innovative use of objects. But at that time, the scientific community said, “Oh, well, these were chimpanzees in captivity. Therefore, our human characteristics had rubbed off onto them. It’s nothing to do with what they, as wild individuals, would be capable of.” So when I observed that momentous day of David using and making tools, I knew that it was going to make a big impression on the science of the time. But I wasn’t surprised because I, unlike the other scientists, had believed that what Köhler was reporting was the ability of chimpanzees to use and make tools."

Reposted by Richard McElreath

cpsc.gov
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission @cpsc.gov · 2d
There is a post circulating on Bluesky encouraging the moving of a frozen turkey straight into a pot of hot oil. We are combating this misinformation the best way we know how - through the power of dance music.

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 4d
omg squee kitty and hog friends
picture of a black cat sitting calmly while a tiny hedgehog eats from a bowl nearby

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 4d
My guess is a computer scientist isn't the ideal person for such a position - if you did a phd in a data-intensive field and don't mind working in Python, you prob have at least as good RDM experience than many computer scientists!

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 4d
Looks like a great job in a great place, and the honesty in the job description is a nice touch. I mean, is it interdisciplinary scientific data? Then yeah it's going to be parts messy, unstructured and incomplete. Research Data Management is won in the trenches.
Your qualifications: Essential: Completed University degree in Computer Science (or a comparable field) Technical skills: Advanced level programming in Python (especially with Pandas, NumPy, Xarray, etc.) Good experience with data manipulation, conversion and cleaning techniques Good experience with data formats (CSV, Excel, JSON, Parquet, XML, HDF5, NetCDF, etc.) Familiarity with consuming RESTful APIs and with database systems Familiarity with software development tools such as version control (Git/GitHub) Ability to handle messy, unstructured, or incomplete data efficiently Ability to clearly document and explain data transformation steps Excellent communication and organisational skills Fluency in English (written and spoken)

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 5d
yis

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d
“You see, the endless renovation of the Stuttgart train station is a symbol of our late-capitalist condition: the project is always ‘in progress,’ yet nothing ever progresses. The construction site itself becomes the true destination.”
Slavoj Žižek meme image

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d
In a world of rapid and bewildering change, it is comforting to know that the Stuttgart train station will always be under construction www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/s...
Eröffnung des Bahnprojekts "Stuttgart 21" erneut verschoben
Die Fertigstellung des Bauprojekts "Stuttgart 21" verzögert sich weiter. Die für Dezember des kommenden Jahres geplante Eröffnung ist dadurch nach SWR-Informationen geplatzt. Schuld sind offenbar tech...
www.tagesschau.de

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d
Oh nice replication dataset for future mixed model homework problems in my stats course. (Treatment effect is like 3 seconds difference with tons of variation by participant, age, etc.)
siobhangriffin.bsky.social Siobhán M. Griffin @siobhangriffin.bsky.social · 7d
Arising out of discussions in @csi-research.bsky.social we conducted a Registered Report replicating Triplett’s (1898) experiment with over 400 children, showing children completed the task faster when paired with a coactor, compared to competing the task alone rdcu.be/eQwAE 1/3
A replication of Triplett’s ‘social facilitation experiment’
Scientific Reports - A replication of Triplett’s ‘social facilitation experiment’
rdcu.be

Reposted by Richard McElreath

nsaphra.bsky.social
Naomi Saphra @nsaphra.bsky.social · 7d
If you talk about philosophy of science in interpretability papers you get to learn some incredible facts about what can go wrong with simple causal ablation studies
Haapaniemi et al. (2018) provide one famous example how targeted gene edits can produce spurious results. They detail how CRISPR editing can automatically activate p53, a tumor suppressor. Because many edited cells die as a result, experimentalists can inadvertently select for cells with defective p53 responses, forming a confounder for research on cancer genetics.

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d
Yes - on track for next year

Reposted by Richard McElreath

siobhangriffin.bsky.social
Siobhán M. Griffin @siobhangriffin.bsky.social · 7d
Arising out of discussions in @csi-research.bsky.social we conducted a Registered Report replicating Triplett’s (1898) experiment with over 400 children, showing children completed the task faster when paired with a coactor, compared to competing the task alone rdcu.be/eQwAE 1/3
A replication of Triplett’s ‘social facilitation experiment’
Scientific Reports - A replication of Triplett’s ‘social facilitation experiment’
rdcu.be

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d
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.

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d
she's doing her best

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d
meanwhile pigeons be like

Reposted by Richard McElreath

sevans.bsky.social
Simon Evans @sevans.bsky.social · 7d
It takes an exceptionally gifted bird to maintain such a pleasing clutch arrangement.
"Nesthetics" would be a great topic for a coffee table book.
A clutch of great tit eggs, with seven arranged in a circle around the eighth and with their pointed end facing inwards.

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d
Thanks all for the comments. It would be good for beginner section to end with random and fixed effects models, and for advanced to start at same place. But not sure the scheduling could work for that. I will try to build out a calendar and see what can be done.

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d
A colleague went on vacation in Italy and saw the below at a buffet. I have two questions:
1. What is this called?
2. Does it violate Italian culinary law?
unusual Italian food: aubergine slices wrapped around spaghetti, resting on a bed of tomato sauce

rmcelreath.bsky.social
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d
I did: Agresti & Coull. Wald’s complete class theorem is prob most famous eg. Also all the “empirical bayes” and related. Irony is bayesians used to be obsessed with uninformative priors, but informative priors ended up being more useful.