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-...

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!

Perfect weather for freshman move in day 😐

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.

ICYMI #commsky #science

I am fascinated with how people come to such different beliefs about the world. In our new paper, led by Tiwalade Adekunle, we used @lauraknelson.bsky.social's computational grounded theory to compare how a pro-masking subreddit and an anti-masking subreddit talked about risks during COVID. 1/

We just posted an interactive on changes in approval for Trump from right before he was inaugurated to the present. We have very large samples (30k), and the interactive allows you to look at changes within very small slices of the public. www.chip50.org/blog/whose-a...

IMO, one of the most important ideas from social networks is that our social world is not an agreed upon fact but is perceived differently by different people and those perceptions matter. I loved working on this project led by @kyosuketanaka.bsky.social , who is an expert in network perceptions.

Attn #ICA25 tragically I lost an earring in the Hyatt Regency. It is a very cool earring. No reward except good karma but do let me know if you find it. :)

This session on causal inference was very good with some well-designed studies. We should do more causal inference! #ica25

If you'll allow me to say it, The Onion is cooking with gas today.

My new students brainstorming some project ideas

The cruelty in today's politics feels horribly corrosive. Bringing up that hard-working immigrant families — undocumented, yes, but not violent criminals — are being ripped apart based on immigration status doesn't bring compassion or even pause, but gleeful cheers.

I presented a poster at @netsciconf.bsky.social on legal co-citational networks! Lots of wonderful colleagues, intellectually stimulating discussions and a congenial environment that made me feel at home. Even street lights were… network-like! #netsci2025

Fantastic blog post on the new EO and #openscience by Kevin Munger kevinmunger.substack.com/p/open-scien...

Misinformation research continues to be urgent science. By @ethanvporter.bsky.social, @emmaspiro.bsky.social, and me. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm heading to ICA in a few weeks - would love to catch up with folks who are there.

I wrote a chapter on a functionalist account of social identity. IMO, thinking about identity in an instrumental way helps explain a lot of behavior that seems otherwise baffling. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Economists looking at an idea from sociology literature that they will be the first to write a paper on.

We're all trying to find the guy who did this! www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

If you hate PDFs like I do, you may be interested in entering a really awful one in this contest: badpdfs.com

On the verge of declaring defeat with chatgpt in my asynchronous online dataviz class. Something changed this semester compared to past ones and SO MANY assignments are essentially 100% LLM output.

People tend to dismiss VP Pence’s actions on J6: he was just doing his job, why should he get any credit for simply sticking to the letter of the law? But if it was so easy to do, why was he one of the very few in his party to do it? apnews.com/article/penc...

#Purdue folks - every 5 years or so I figure out how to parse the new version of the academic calendar website so that I can import it into Google Calendar. If you want it, I believe this link should let you view and subscribe to the calendar - calendar.google.com/calendar/emb...

🚨 Deadline extended! Still time to join #CI2025 at UC San Diego! 🆕 May 26, 2025 – Submit: • Demos • Posters • Doctoral Colloquium • CrowdCamp Theme: Diverse Intelligence – exploring hybrid problem-solving across minds & machines. 🤖🐦👥 🌐 ci.acm.org/2025/ #CollectiveIntelligence #AI #Research

For the last 3 yrs, I was the director for the Science of Science program at the NSF. We funded projects on science communication - science communication to the public, communication of public priorities to scientists, citizens engagement & participation in science. 🧵

I was really hoping that Mitch Daniels would come out with a principled take about how protecting free speech on universities means protecting even speech we disagree with. Instead... www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

First they came for humanitarian aid, Then they came for health, Then they came for education, Then they came for culture, Now they come for truth.

Feeling optimistic tonight. We are going to stop him. There are enough of us, and we are brave enough.

Learn how to make a follower graph from network data on Bluesky! It's super easy - I made a video here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Lt3...

Economics might seem -- from the outside -- like it's about competition. But really it's about creating the miracle of cooperation, where folks from all around the world enrich your day in a million tiny ways. It's that beauty that I'm worried about losing.

What has the cost to science been from the added stress and uncertainty that our international students are feeling?

Whether it’s Republicans causing chaos with random arrests and deportations, Republicans causing chaos with mass layoffs, or Republicans causing chaos with whiplash tariffs, voters are exhausted by chaos from both parties.

Last chance to register for this public event on online governance that my research group (@communitydata.science) is organizing tomorrow as part of our Science of Community Dialogues series.

I love it when a credit card invites you to apply and then rejects you. Does it make them feel better about themselves?

The amount of common sense and strong arguments @booker.senate.gov is making almost 24 hours in is simply unreal. Quoting texts, citing events and examples -- only occasionally reading from notes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Nf...

If you study networks, or have been stuck listening to people who study networks for long enough (sorry to my loved ones), you may have heard that open triads – V shapes – in social networks tend to turn into closed triangles. But why does this happen? In part, because people repost each other.

Trying something new: A 🧵 on a topic I find many students struggle with: "why do their 📊 look more professional than my 📊?" It's *lots* of tiny decisions that aren't the defaults in many libraries, so let's break down 1 simple graph by @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social 🔗 www.ft.com/content/73a1...

"The way I was taught is, if your family were immigrants to this country and came for a better life, the price you pay for that is you can never say that 'no one else is welcome.' That is what America was built on," said the Dropkick Murphys frontman Ken Casey.

I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :( So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

We're hosting another Community Dialogue discussing the Role of Community Governance with @zarine.net and @paulgowder.bsky.social on April 4th @ 12pm CT! You can learn more and register here: blog.communitydata.science/community-di...

Nice article by Kevin Munger (based on @sgonzalezbailon.bsky.social et al.'s paper on FB polarization and @jongreen.bsky.social et al.'s paper). Part of the argument is that one reason we don't find filter bubbles is that we've been looking in 2D open.substack.com/pub/kevinmun...