so sick of the explore-exploit dilemma, how about something new?

If you've ever wanted to learn how to make beautiful websites with #QuartoPub and #rstats , check out this workshop I'm giving in a couple weeks! It'll be a blast (and we're covering Quarto's brand new _brand dot yaml system!)

I'm teaching a proseminar this semester for new PhD students. We're reading @jessicacalarco.com's great book, "A Field Guide to Grad School" & we're talking about academic jargon tomorrow. What's some academic jargon you took a long time to understand? Any weird jargon I should share with students?

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

Thinking about applying to grad school? Wonder what it’s like to pursue a PhD or MS? Interested in the intersect of technology and society? CDSC is hosting a Q&A session for prospective students on Sept. 26th at 12pm CT. Learn more and register here: blog.communitydata.science/prospective-...

If you are interested in studying self-organizing processes of online communities, AI in online communities, and/or how communities influence their members (and vice versa), then you should come!

You should also reach out and introduce yourself - contact info is on my website at jeremydfoote.com

I am recruiting PhD students this year!

Our research group is holding an info session in a few weeks - details are at blog.communitydata.science/prospective-... , including a sign-up link.

🧵 Colleagues, I have a methods question and could do with some help: 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘐 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘯 𝘙𝘋𝘋 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 '𝘥𝘰𝘴𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴'

I'll give a general overview of the project and design below, so please do follow along and chime in with any advice!

Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Technology, Society, and Power at UMSI. Apps due Nov 1.
www.si.umich.edu/people/facul...

Illustrating the first point: the talk is by Korean man who works at a British university, he's presenting ideas based on previous work by American thinkers, speaking at a Dutch university, to an audience from around the world. The casual cosmopolitanism of academia is striking to me in these times.

I'm thinking a lot about the debate around whether LMs can "understand." Enter a new thought experiment I call "the lean Chinese room." IMO, it shows how the pressure of compression and speed blurs the line between symbol-shuffling and understanding.

doomscrollingbabel.manoel.xyz/p/the-lean-c...

I'm co-organizing #CSCW NE, an in-person regional gathering for people in Northeast America, alongside some folks from Stevens, Rutgers, and Princeton. If you want to come hang out (especially if you can't make it out to the full conference in Bergen this year), RSVP at cscw-ne.hci.social!

Would love to be added! Thanks!

Perfect weather for freshman move in day 😐

Thanks for the kind words! Glad you found it useful!

Around the same time, another group in our lab, led by @groceryheist.cc, published a related paper that you might also be interested in:

dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

I've also written about founders and their original goals (often not growth!)

Just read this incredible paper by @s0hw.bsky.social & @jeremydfoote.com: Why Do People Participate in Small Online Communities? The authors question the assumption that growth is always good, and instead show many benefits of small online communities. Highly recommended!

dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Last day of summer for the kids. Quick trip to Indiana Dunes.

It's pretty broad. I study online communities - often Reddit - using data about people's posts or comments to try to answer social science questions.

Yes, it's nice. I've really enjoyed living and working there.

😂

I agree with the sentiment, but the post needs another editing pass - there are a few repetitions, typos, etc.

To be fair, it looks more like n ~ N(-2,4)

ICYMI #commsky #science

Ah, well, I'm interested in if you figure out that anything is missing