Steve Wang
@stevewang251.bsky.social
1.3K followers 410 following 500 posts
Professor of Statistics at Swarthmore College. I use statistics to study paleontology, evolution, and extinction. I also compose percussion music for fun.
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stevewang251.bsky.social
Now that videos work on Bluesky, here's a snippet of my Sextet for Percussion, performed at @swarthmorecollege.bsky.social in 2016. Scored for marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, and two pianos.
#percussion #minimalism
Reposted by Steve Wang
alexandrejan.bsky.social
Happy Ctenophore Day!
These glowing ocean drifters look like jellyfish but aren’t! They’re comb jellies, shimmering creatures that light up the sea with rows of beating cilia 💙🌈
Which species can you identify? 👀 Most are raised in @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social lab
#CtenophoreDay #CombJelly #Ctenophore
Reposted by Steve Wang
Reposted by Steve Wang
stevewang251.bsky.social
Whaddaya mean, "how it was made"? They didn't just set up a camera and film some dinosaurs?
stevewang251.bsky.social
Do you know if the class action lawsuit covers only books, not research papers? As far as I can tell the work needs to have an ISBN, which seems to rule out papers, but I am not a lawyer.
stevewang251.bsky.social
The penguins cover is much better IMO.
stevewang251.bsky.social
Do you know who the interviewer was? I don't see anyone credited by name.
stevewang251.bsky.social
Also, the ultimate unit (even more so than The Big Unit) is J. R. Richard.
stevewang251.bsky.social
The formula is 100*sqrt(p*(1-p)/n), where
n = the number of games (350), and
p = your true win% in decimal form (which is unknown, but you can use your best guess, 16.6% or .166).
Typical political polls have p near .50 and n around = 1000, which is how they get the ubiquitous ±3 margin of error.
stevewang251.bsky.social
@kentremendous.bsky.social @joeposnanski.com
I'm a longtime Poscast listener (since 1957) and statistics professor. Re: solitaire win%: at 350 games, the SD is 2%. Meaning 68% of the time, your win% will be accurate to within ±2%, and 95% of the time, your win% will be accurate to within ±4%.
stevewang251.bsky.social
I second this recommendation. I find this tutorial gives just enough but not too much detail, and I use it with students in my lab.
Reposted by Steve Wang
stevewang251.bsky.social
I think we also get distracted because we tend to anthropomorphize the larval stage as the child and the adult stage as the real animal. In some cases (not necessarily holothurians, but perhaps e.g. butterflies), it would be more appropriate to think of them as the eating stage and the mating stage.
stevewang251.bsky.social
Just listened to this, and I thought you were great. Love your enthusiasm!
stevewang251.bsky.social
I think we also get distracted because we tend to anthropomorphize the larval stage as the child and the adult stage as the real animal. In some cases (not necessarily holothurians, but perhaps e.g. butterflies), it would be more appropriate to think of them as the eating stage and the mating stage.
Reposted by Steve Wang
willgearty.bsky.social
📢 deeptime: an R package that facilitates highly customizable and reproducible visualizations of data over geological time intervals

🔗 doi.org/10.1080/2096...

Fully #openaccess in @bigearthdata1.bsky.social with insight about deeptime📦 development and code examples!

#rstats #geology #paleontology
Plot of global benthic δ18O data for 0 – 5.3 Ma (Lisiecki & Raymo, 2005) with geomagnetic polarity subchrons displayed on the top x-axis and planktic foraminiferal primary biozones plotted on the bottom x-axis using the deeptime package. A mammal phylogeny (Garland et al., 1992) plotted in the fan layout using the ggtree and deeptime packages. The greyscale concentric circles in the background indicate geological stages, whereas the linear colored timescale indicates geological epochs. Early tetrapod occurrence data (Jones et al., 2023) plotted as a taxonomic/biostratigraphic range plot using the geom_points_range() function from the deeptime package. A stratigraphic column of Cretaceous lithostratigraphic units from the San Juan Basin, USA. The deeptime package has been used to add pattern fill which indicate the primary lithologies of the units as reported by the Macrostrat API (Peters et al., 2018) via the rmacrostrat R package (Jones et al., 2024).
stevewang251.bsky.social
I've been gratified to read the outpouring of love for Chuck Mangione, who by all accounts seemed to be a kind and generous guy.

Fun fact: Mangione had a pension plan for his band members, which is unheard of in the music business. More info at 10:15 here: youtu.be/825UjdUH464
Grant Geissman Interview: The Chuck Mangione years and more!
YouTube video by Out of the Main - Born at sea. Raised on radio.
youtu.be
Reposted by Steve Wang
razorgirl1984.bsky.social
This was my favorite King of the Hill joke with Chuck Mangione. RIP, king.
stevewang251.bsky.social
This is so cool. I wonder if appendages in ancient shark relatives such as Falcatus and Stethacanthus could have had a similar function (although I believe these features are sexually dimorphic, so maybe not).
Fossil of Falcatus falcatus, an ancient relative of sharks, showing a forward-facing spiny appendage coming out of the back of its head. Photo by H. Zell via Wikipedia. Fossil of Stethacanthus, an ancient relative of sharks, showing its unusual anvil-shaped dorsal fin. Photo by JonasB 7 via Wikipedia.
stevewang251.bsky.social
Land of Make Believe was my favorite as well, especially the epic performance on Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
stevewang251.bsky.social
My introduction was his 1984 concert to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Rochester, NY. It changed my life and made me a lifelong music lover.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sKP...
stevewang251.bsky.social
Land of Make Believe is my favorite, too. Love the version on Live at the Hollywood Bowl.
stevewang251.bsky.social
I grew up in Rochester during his commercial peak. I saw him play probably half a dozen times; he was a huge influence on me.
stevewang251.bsky.social
And he was a fantastic composer. His early pieces such as Land of Make Believe and Hill Where the Lord Hides were often an ambitious mix of pop, jazz, classical, and folk influences.