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Simulations are no longer just “nice to have.” They’re reshaping how we do statistics. Care to learn more? Check out our paper arxiv.org/abs/2503.24011, accepted for publication in the upcoming theme issue of Philosophical Transactions A.

@raviranjan.bsky.social & I are teaching a free online workshop with on experimental design for environmental scientists on the 23rd. We'll focus on using simulations to evaluate how well different experimental designs help achieve your goals. Please sign up & share! forms.gle/MZTxeQs4UpMr...

Jetzt kommt es auf die Hochschulleitungen an Nach dem Scheitern der Ampel muss die neue Koalition beim #Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz endlich liefern. Gleichzeitig steigt der Druck auf die Rektorate und Präsidien. Im Wiarda-Blog: www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/09...

Before becoming a computational ecologist, I was working in fluid dynamics (for airplanes). This is going to be an interesting and fun read!!

Stan / CmdStan 2.37 release! blog.mc-stan.org/2025/09/02/r... - sum_to_zero_matrix type sums to zero across both rows and columns - simplex and *_stochastic_matrix types should be now faster and more stable - new functions exposing the built-in constraint implementations 1/2

Rare sighting of a theoretician in the field

2025 shit is hitting the fan so hard that Werner Herzog is starting social media

Davon mal abgesehen, dass der Begriff "Coach" kein rechtlich geschützter ist & jede/r sich so nennen kann (ich bitte auch alle Coaches in meiner Bubble, das Folgende nicht persönlich zu nehmen) – es braucht kein x-tes Coaching zu 'mental strength in academia', 'Wege aus Wissenschaft', 1/2

Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life? Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social) Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf... Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...

Since search is dead, how soon do you think Google Scholar is headed for the Google Graveyard? I'm betting it's soon, and academia is NOT prepared

We talk more about visual posterior predictive checking and above plots in teemusailynoja.github.io/visual-predi.... The next bayesplot release will give a warning if PPC bar graphs are used with less than 6 unique outcome values, with a link to a page containing suggestions for better plots. 4/4

Brought out the good stuff for #caturday

Spent the better part of the morning trying to populate a non-square matrix in NIMBLE, with constants on upper triangle and variables on lower triangle and block. Extra-challenge: no if-statements and no custom running indices allowed, just slicing all the way. 🫠 #Rstats

New on CRAN: staninside (0.0.4). View at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=staninside

Who would have thought: Sicherheit führt *nicht* zu #Einkuscheln. Existenzangst hingegen lähmt. #PDprekär #IchBinHanna #IchBinReyhan #WissZeitVG

Paper recommendation: A sparse modelling approach for analyzing community dynamics (20-40 species), using a regularized horseshoe prior for N² species interactions (zero vs non-zero), and a dimension-reduction approach for the N² residual correlation matrix (influences of unmeasured covariates) 🔥

From now on, whenever running MCMC I will quietly whisper "Go get 'em, Andrey the furious!" 🔥 #Rstats #StatsSky

If you see this, quote post with a robot that isn’t from Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who and Transformers

🌳 One of my dearest projects—with brilliant friends and colleagues—is out in @NatureComms We show that how you plant tree species (not just which) can significantly boost forest functioning. 🔗 rdcu.be/evtXs 👇 A short thread

🌳 Tree placement matters! A new study shows forests with diverse, non-clustered species boost biomass (+11%), nutrient cycling and decomposition. 🛠️ Line planting = sweet spot between ecology and management. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.idiv.de/the-right-mi...

New #rstats blog up! solomonkurz.netlify.app/blog/2025-07... This is the first in a brief series where we use {brms} to learn {Stan} code. Many thanks to @fusaroli.bsky.social and @stephenjwild.bsky.social for their helpful reviews.

When I'm running out of ideas how to finish a paper 📚🪐🧪

Great new paper by two journal editors providing a roadmap for effective statistical reporting – fantastic resource for students in any ecological field. academic.oup.com/fisheries/ad...

I started identifying the plants in our Schrebergarten for the #CitizenScience project GartenDiv using the #FloraIncognita app floraincognita.de/gartendiv/

New fear unlocked: lab generated mirror life spreading across the planet

Antisemitic incidents are skyrocketing at German universities

I'm missing a bit of a demographic perspective here. E.g. a German PhD will easily face 4+ non-permanent employments before they secure a permanent position (if at all), which might limit the range of what they'd want to speak up about and what not #IchbinHanna

🚨 Big milestone for Rdatasets 🚨 The web archive now hosts 3400+ free and documented CSV datasets. Fantastic for teaching and testing! And {Rdatasets} is a new #RStats 📦 for easy download and search Web archive: vincentarelbundock.github.io/Rdatasets R 📦: vincentarelbundock.github.io/Rdatasetspkg

www.spiegel.de/politik/deut... #IchBinHanna

I often show students this figure and ask, how different is the green distribution (p < 0.05) from the blue distribution (p = 0.10)? Just to raise some awareness that the difference between "statistical significant" and "not significant" is not always that significant...

Ecologists’ endless quest for automatic inference statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/05/28/e...

Visionär und doch konkret: Die Delegierten beschließen das künftige wissenschaftspolitische Programm der GEW. #GEWTAG25 #BlueLZ #IchbinHanna www.gew.de/aktuelles/de...

Totally missed this last year's paper: A great introduction to continuous-time modelling (deterministic & stochastic)!

More shots fired in the #causalInference #ecology literature! 🌍

priorsense 1.1.1, for prior and likelihood sensitivity analysis, is now in CRAN (n-kall.github.io/priorsense/) There is now an easier way to select which priors are power-scaled using the new prior tags feature in brms (2.22.11+), which allows focusing the analysis on specific priors. 1/3

Here's our upcoming schedule of Workshops for Ukraine! Some great talks are coming up soon, so check it out & register! Full schedule: bit.ly/3wBeY4S #RStats #EconSky #AcademicSky

Lives: 8/ 9 Teeth: 16/30 Floof: 10/10 #caturday

🌍 Discover the 'Internet of Nature' 🌿 A novel study led by Ulrich Brose (@idiv-research.bsky.social & @uni-jena.de) reveals the hidden networks of information exchange within ecosystems.✨ Published in Nature Ecology & Evolution (@natureecoevo.bsky.social) #iDivResearch www.idiv.de/internet-nat...

🚨🎉 New paper "Ten quick tips to get you started with Bayesian statistics", hope you'll like it 😇🤗 ✍🏽 w/ Andy Royle, Marc Kéry and Chloé Nater 🔗 dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour... @plos.org @cnrsecologie.bsky.social @cnrsoccitanieest.bsky.social @umontpellier.bsky.social

Service post for non-German followers: The next German government will split up the former ministry for Education & Research and there will be a new ministry for Research, Technology and ... wait for it ... 🚀 Space Travel 🤦‍♂️

New Perspective: Ecological network research typically focuses on flows of matter and energy, but species also exchange information signals and cues that influence behaviour and movement. Here, Brose et al argue that the information network of nature is a crucial aspect of community organization.

The sky’s the limit for biodiversity research! 🌳☀️ Join iDiv on Bluesky and stay informed about new research, upcoming events, and #iDiv initiatives, including sDiv, the #InsideBiodiversity podcast, and the yDiv Graduate School.

#rstats {xdvir} 📦 Finally a package that allows one to render LaTeX math inside plots. `plotmath` is just so limited. 🔗https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/xdvir/vignettes/xdvir-intro.html

Whats's your favorite resource for basic math skills for PhDs in ecology? Linear algebra, calculus (+ODEs ?), probability. Not necessarily with a strict modelling or statistics focus. Bodine, Lenhart, and Gross "Mathematics for the Life Sciences" (2014) looks good (but Matlab), any other ideas?

Our new paper on elephants & energy landscapes led by Emilio Berti is out: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The cost of writing grants instead of papers: "In terms of research impact, current evidence suggests no major changes resulting from the “initiative”." journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

"Exzellenzinitiative hat bestehende Verhältnisse reproduziert", sagt einer der Autoren einer neuen Studie. #ExIni #ExitExzellenz

Teaching marathon DONE! 3 block courses / workshop in 4 weeks, remind me to plan ahead better next time 😅 Nevermind, I totally enjoyed talking about stats, theoretical models, and stats for theoretical models