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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 5h

I have my students watch this now-classic video to get them to come to office hours for intellectual vibing (but so few come 😭)

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Andrew Mercer @awmercer.bsky.social · 1d

Terrific piece from @gelliottmorris.com this morning.

Whenever you ask if something “might” happen or “may” be necessary, it’s very easy for respondents to think of scenarios where the answer is yes, no matter how unlikely.

Why most polls overstate support for political violence

Misperceptions about the popularity of violence increase public support for it — but you can help change that.

www.gelliottmorris.com

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 2d

I dare not

Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 2d

Learning about your statistics software’s quantile definitions is like learning about your knee cartilage or your house’s plumbing. You only find yourself learning about it if something’s gone wrong.

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 2d

Even back when it was airing, it was obviously an unrealistic fantasy of how persuasion works in politics and government. There are many reasons why Veep is viewed by politicians and staffers as the more true-to-life series. www.thewrap.com/obama-aides-...

Obama Aides Say 'Veep' More Accurate Than 'West Wing,' 'House of Cards'

"You guys nail the fragility of the egos, and the, like, day-to-day idiocy of the decision-making"

www.thewrap.com

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 3d

It’s not a physical paper, but The Banner does good local reporting for MoCo and Maryland.

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 3d

There has been basically no (public) reckoning with the democratic strategists who said that "raising the salience" of immigration/deportations in ~March would help Trump, which was obviously wrong at the time and has been proved wrong over the last 6 months www.gelliottmorris.com/p/kilmar-abr...

Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 5d

Incredible @perrybaconjr.bsky.social interview with Chris Van Hollen

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 3d

Excellent reporting and data visualization in this story

Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 3d

The Trump administration has cancelled 4,304 deliveries to food banks so far this year, refusing to deliver 94 million pounds of contracted-for food. Food banks simply can’t feed people enough anymore. Millions of Americans are going hungry as a result.

Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived.

ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cut...

projects.propublica.org

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 4d

There’s no rule of journalistic neutrality that requires you to say something is “unclear” when that is objectively untrue. It would be illegal. There’s absolutely zero ambiguity about that fact. Saying it’s unclear is making a false statement in your reporting.

Eric Lipton NYT @ericlipton.nytimes.com · 4d

It is not clear that Mr. Trump’s image can be featured on a coin. An 1866 law enshrined a tradition that only deceased people could appear on U.S. currency to avoid the appearance that America was a monarchy. Trump admin is planning to do it anyway.
By Alan Rappeport

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...

Treasury Plans to Mint $1 Commemorative Trump Coin

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Mattan S. Ben-Shachar 🎗️🇮🇱🇺🇦 @mattansb.msbstats.info · 5d

House, PhD -

A drama, about a brilliant arrogant medical statistician and his team of graduate students - every week receives a new case: collected clinical data. Their job: to 'diagnose' what the research question is.

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Isabella Velásquez @ivelasq3.bsky.social · 5d

In June, I gave a webinar at @amstatnews.bsky.social GASP 2025, "Quarto--To Tell Your Story with Data"

and the recording is now online!

🕸️ #RStats & #Python materials: ivelasq-gasp2025-quarto.share.connect.posit.cloud
📹 Recording: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Yf...
🐙 GitHub: github.com/ivelasq/2025...

Quarto To Tell Your Story with Data GASP 2025

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Popehat Agitates And Irritates @kenwhite.bsky.social · 6d

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later.

harpers.org/archive/1941...

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

harpers.org

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Rebekah is Pro-Choice @rebekahwriter.bsky.social · 6d

Imagine saying that you’re mad at a dad for requesting sidewalks to keep his disabled son safe. Just…saying it. Out loud. To a reporter.

www.thebanner.com/community/lo...

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 7d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Natalie Alms @almsnatalie.bsky.social · 7d

NEW: At least 10 watchdog websites are dark after OMB withheld funds from a watchdog council, removing access to thousands of watchdog reports and required whistleblower links.

OMB's move to withhold funds - which has received Republican pushback - is separate from the shutdown.

Government watchdog websites go dark as OMB withholds funds from IG committee

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency is funded largely through a no-year revolving account, rather than the regular appropriations that lapsed Oct. 1.

www.nextgov.com

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 7d

Essentially, you might have categories “a”, “b”, “c” (unordered) or “low”, “medium”, “high” (ordered). For the former you would set ordered=FALSE, for the latter you might want to set ordered=TRUE, so that certain R functions know that your categorical variable is ordinal.

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 7d

Factors are meant to represent categorical variables, and ordinal categorical variables are a special case. Section 16.6 in the book “R for Data Science” explains the distinction between unordered and ordered factors:

r4ds.hadley.nz/factors.html...

16 Factors – R for Data Science (2e)

r4ds.hadley.nz

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

The Daily Show @thedailyshow.com · 8d

Excited to introduce Vibes from Meta. Eat your slop, piggies!

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 8d

Yeah, exactly. That's the right tool for this.

The following R code:

library(dplyr)
library(forcats)

# Order the `species` levels by frequency
penguins2 <- penguins |>
mutate(
species = fct_infreq(factor(species))
)

# Check levels before reordering
penguins$species |> table()

# Check levels after reordering
penguins2$species |> table()

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Theresa Kim, PhD, MS @tyk314.net · 8d

Many of you have asked about gifts to us during a shutdown, mainly doordash types of things. No. Instead, donate to local food banks like Manna in MoCo, Capital Area Food Bank in DC, Find Food in PGC, and Food for Others in Fairfax. These serve everyone. Please repost. #fedstrong #shutdown

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 9d

Yep. It’s very common and reasonable in social surveys. For instance in NHANES or NHATS where sensitive detailed information is used in weighting but can’t be shared without greatly risking respondent confidentiality.

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Reposted by Ben Schneider

Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 10d

In general I think it's hard to combat scientific misinformation when some of the best research is locked behind an academic paywall, while lots of nonsense gets published free for everyone to read in predatory journals.

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 9d

Problem #2 is pretty self-evident. Once you include more predictors in your model, you have a different model. This can be annoying in terms of interpreting the model, but it can be a more serious problem if, say, the added predictors are collider variables.

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 9d

Problem #1 is elaborated on in this response from Breidt and Opsomer to the famous Gelman paper on weighting: projecteuclid.org/journals/sta...

projecteuclid.org

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Ben Schneider @bschneidr.bsky.social · 10d

New blog post on the right and wrong way to rake a survey's data to estimates from another survey. As an example, it shows what can go wrong when we rake data from a poll to benchmark data from Pew's National Public Opinion Reference Survey.

www.practicalsignificance.com/posts/npors-...

Raking A Survey to Another Survey – Practical Significance

When raking survey data to improve representativeness, we ideally would have population data to use for raking. But sometimes all we have is data from another survey. What should we do in this situati...

www.practicalsignificance.com

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