FFS I just received feedback on a report that I'd used 'affect' incorrectly. 🤦🏼‍♂️ I even remember looking it up to check I used it right. Does anyone have a good trick for remembering when to use 'affect' vs. 'effect'? I clearly need one 😂

#rstats:

👌🏼

I'm now looking at the IMF's latest Article IV for the Solomon Island's and it's gratifying to see: 1.) I'm not missing anything regarding the missing data; and 2.) I'm not the only one confused by how the Central Bank is presenting GFS stats. This is very nerdy, but their Article IV report is 👌🏼

I did the Young Endeavor when I was younger. You spend two weeks learning how to sail a tall ship from Navy instructors and it's incredible. I'd love to do something like this again. It was so much fun. 👌🏼

My gym shorts don't have pockets and it stands as the greatest injustice the world has ever seen.

Yeah, this is a good one. I'll often use it to track down existing frameworks so I'm not reinventing the wheel.

I'm currently doing some work to figure out how the Solomon Island's Central Bank budget statistics align with those published by the Ministry of Finance. Referred back to an IMF report and they directly addressed this by saying they don't like up and it's not clear why. 😬 Glad I saw this now.

I'm still reading this btw. It's obviously slower going than Wodehouse, but I'm really enjoying it so far. 👌🏼

"Literally"? I think you mean 'figuratively'.

I once posted something about retirement planning that went viral. What struck a chord was that many people suggested planning to retire at 50, rather than 65, as they had been fired by their employer around this age and found it hard to re-enter the workforce. ...

Hey #rstats, Are there any good tricks for deciding on sensible dimensions for a plot when saving it? Or does everyone just tweak the dimensions in ggsave() until it looks right?

I've made great progress with this project and am now creating a custom #rstats theme to suit the client's brand. I've been meaning to make my own ggplot2 theme for a while, so this will be good practice. 👨🏼‍🎨

Love this.

Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp.... genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.

QTing this again as I live in a low-density area where development restrictions have been loosened. Plans for new housing developments are already springing up which is resulting in NIMBY protests from homeowners. ...

Zing!

I'm kind of loving seeing Gen Z (or more accurately people younger than me) getting angry about the state of Australian public policy. There are influencers that are covering boring (but important) topics like taxation and they seem to have a sizable following. 👌🏼

I did my first lunchclub call in 12+ months. Lots of fun meeting random people and hearing what they're passionate about, but the job market sounds like a disaster ATM.

I've somehow made it into the top 10 most popular blogs on @leaflet.pub. You can, of course, help me rise even higher by heading here and clicking that big "Subscribe with Bluesky" button: www.aaronrosspowell.com

Sharing this #rstats blog on parsing JSON data again as: 1.) It's great; 2.) I'm working with JSON data again and have yet to master parsing it; and 3.) JSON is the worst, which is definitely not a skill issue related to 2.

#rstats PSA thanks to @bharrap.bsky.social: round(0.5) = 0 round(0.51) = 1 🧐

Hey #Bluesky,. Can anyone recommend somebody to help me tweak the text on my new consulting website? I've written everything myself, but I'd love to refine the text so it's tighter (and avoids being too 'salesy'). www.gilesd-j.com

What a beautiful little game!

Hey #rstats, Does anyone have recommendations for outputting graphs in a format that a designer with a strong preference for excel can tweak? I can tweak the theme and colors to fit their brand, but is there a good format to use so they can be edited outside of R?

Good news @antoinevernet.com! Somebody archived classic MS Clipart for all your presentation needs! archive.org/download/MS_...

Reposting this as it's a great post on #AI. In fact, I should read it again.

A handy guide from my wife after she got sick of me asking the same stupid question:

set.seed(42) amirite?!

One of the problems I haven't figured out how to overcome on freelancer platforms is how to consistently get quality outputs. It's relatively easy to find people to get something to 70 percent, but getting anything to 80 to 90 percent is a real challenge. 🤔

Three cool things about today: *I'm working on this cool paper on the connections between the rule of law and economic growth. *A pacific parliament is doing the online analysis training I developed at policyanalysislab.com *I'm starting this cool #rstats analysis 🎉🏆🎆

I was talking to a friend how this block culture is a feature, not a bug. I don't want to interact with people that block people for stupid reasons anyway. 🤨

They're talking about providing households three hours of free electricity a day to deal with excess solar power. Free. Power. Obviously there are a lot of issues with the grid we've got to tackle, but it's kind of mind blowing that this is even an option. Imagine once we figure out storage.

This is an interesting take about a lot of the discourse around #AI tools. Many of the advertised prompts and use cases for LLMs feel like the companies don't have a clear use case in mind. Instead, they seem to imply you can use them for everything. (Presumably to see what sticks?) 🤔

Why yes, I would like to work on some interesting analysis with an impossible deadline. 🧐

once again seeking others' opinions to guide my life choices: of those who dropped out of a PhD or converted to Masters, did anyone subsequently complete a PhD with a different topic and supervisors? thoughts for or against this path?

Relatable

I'm looking for a new motorcycle, but for some reason the most popular website's minimum search radius is 30km. That's like two days of travel in Sydney!

Happy Halloween #statsky (and #rstats)

Ha! Somebody just reached out to me to promote their Position alternative as they saw I'd made a GitHub request for ARM support. Love the personalized hustle! Here's a link for others in the #rstats community that might be interested: www.lotas.ai/erdos

Message received.

I've really been enjoying using my Kindle scribe for reading PDFs. It's really cool to be able to make notes and highlight sections of a journal article without sitting at my computer. BUT, it seems there's no way to view the marked up pdf outside of my kindle, which makes it useless for work. 🤨

Hey #econsky: Has anybody seen a good taxonomy for describing institutions? I'm just looking for something that provides a conceptual anchor for those outside the field. At the moment I'm going with the World Bank's WGI with a note that they focus on governance. Is there anything better? 🤔

Your daily reminder that my new consulting website is up with all the reasons you should hire me: www.gilesd-j.com

I was looking at grokapedia today and it feels like a historical turning point for the death of the internet. One person can generate an entire encyclopedia worth of content with the help of #AI. Hopefully all the articles have noindex tags. 😬

*Australia enters the chat*

If you boycott elections, candidates logically ignore you and focus on the voters they can still get. There’s a reason pundits keep nudging Dems to a mushy middle. Those folks are idiots, yes, but they’re idiots who show up to vote. And that matters more to a candidate than your smart apathy.

I'd call myself skeptical of #AI, despite being somebody whose work benefits from it, but I've met with quite a few people that are vibe coding some impressive stuff. 🤯

Dear #rstats, Please find attached the alpha version of my book "An Introduction to R for Policy Analysis": policyanalysislab.com/shared/r-for... Unfortunately, the draft has been released too late to be considered for a Nobel prize, but I look forward to being nominated in 2026. ...

Another generic shot for the socials