Halloween @mc-stan.org

Stan 2.37 will be out sometime next week. I helped get the updated simplex parameterization and sum-to-zero matrix (both rows and columns sum to zero). We found the new simplex parameterization to be much better in the extremes of the simplex and across very small alpha values of the dirichlet 1/

Ask me any questions you may have about this! #stats

I've come on here after months away to let everyone know that I apparently really like trance music

Are there any other statistics nerds in the NoVA area that want to get together?

Promising results from the Pymc folks! #bayesian #pymc #stats #stan discourse.mc-stan.org/t/updated-ch...

Fellow probabilistic programmers I came up with a parameterization for a Cholesky factor of correlation matrices that looks good. I'm asking to test and see if it works well for you discourse.mc-stan.org/t/updated-ch... #rstats #statistics #bayesian

I don't know wtf this is but I'm super into matrices so the non-matrix theology is a non-starter for me

I will only be impressed by you if you solve a long standing mathematical conjecture and win the Tour de France within 2 years of each other. Otherwise, what are you even doing?

Basically he Colin from What We Do in The Shadows

"Painting to be stepped on." Do not step on the painting!

Tried zyn and that shit was so dysphoric. I don't smoke or take nicotine so probably too much. I had 1 slim pouch (2/4 strength) for 5 mins and then 10 mins later another pouch for 15 min. Initially I felt lightheaded, then I started sweating, felt nauseous, and couldn't wait for the effect to end

I have a 2017 MacBook pro and work supplied me with a m1max 32 GB about 3 years ago. I'm thinking I'll buy two or three mac minis and use them as a cluster. My son wants to start a twitch/yt stream and I think I can set up game screen capture better this way too. Any thoughts?

Public service announcement on zero-sum vectors discourse.mc-stan.org/t/zero-sum-v...

I'm going to have time to do 1-2 contributions for the summer 25 release. Here's my list to choose from, what is most interesting to you? - adding lower/upper bounds to ordered vectors (removing positive ordered since it's achieved by lb=0)

A new release of Stan is coming discourse.mc-stan.org/t/cmdstan-st.... Highlights: New constraints for stochastic matrices and zero-sum vectors Easier user-defined constraints Improved diagnostics New distribution, beta_negative_binomial

Woah, the new #Stan Playground lets you run MCMC in your browser & analyze the chains using #WASM powered #Rstats & #Python! 🎉 ✨ No installation needed - just write, compile, sample & analyze 🎯 Perfect for teaching & collaboration (share links ftw!) 🔗 Try it: stan-playground.flatironinstitute.org

Call for StanCon 2025+ discourse.mc-stan.org/t/call-for-s... StanCons have been the best conferences where I ever have been and suitable also for non-Stan people #Bayesian #Stan #StanCon

First citation for my flexible parameterization of Cholesky factors of correlation matrices (arxiv.org/abs/2405.07286) this is in "Asymptotics for parametric martingale posteriors" by Edwin Fong, Andrew Yiu paper link at arxiv.org/abs/2410.17692.

Easy block list

I got a Probabilistic Programming starter pack going. Hit me up if you're involved with #probprog R&D and want in! go.bsky.app/JfvubEf

NEW: "Moving Off X: An Open Letter from UK Journalists" UK political journalists: "Twitter was, for a long time, the place to be for UK politics. We believe that time is now over... "We have taken the decision to move over to other platforms, in particular Bluesky" docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Statisticians being based

finally!

My fav starter packs so far, a thread: stats: go.bsky.app/Ki7PjpS stats: go.bsky.app/7TBN5rX causal inference: go.bsky.app/FdemGAZ package devs: go.bsky.app/N1569Qh data peeps: go.bsky.app/8TdEfdK medical stats: go.bsky.app/ArqEz36 bioinformatics: go.bsky.app/Ha64Gmv r-ladies: go.bsky.app/Vgxwa2F

This hierarchical model is getting ridiculous. Soft truncated multivariate normal priors with linear constraints, truncated MVN prior for > 0 constraint, all with a hierarchical hurdle model with the Dagum distribution

Wow, wow! I have a nice prior that helps to repel and attract gaussian mixture models for identification in bayesian modeling. Try the following simulation with 4 or more chains and see how crappy it is (even if you set mu to an ordered vector)

I have some cool attractive/repulsive methods for gaussian mixture models I'm playing with. Right now one method works well when the means overlap but not well when they don't. Anyway, should I write this up in a paper or just say fuck it and post it on the forums?

Is there a way to bookmark posts like on that other site?

Have you been bitten in the ass by divergences or treedepth issues with unit vectors? We're going to add a solution in Stan github.com/stan-dev/mat...

Time for me to just get a blood boy

I'm looking for a post-doc and doctoral student to join my group at Aalto to work on Bayesian workflow, cross-validation, model checking, projection predictive model selection, inference diagnostics, priors, and survival analysis (I have plenty of research ideas, pick any combination) #Bayesian

Most of the internet Me: Hi internet stranger, can you do a simple thing that you've done before for me? Internet stranger: [silence] On the Stan forums Internet stranger: Can you derive this complicated thing that will help only me and my model? Me: [8 hours later] Here ya go.

When you troll frequentists on LinkedIn

Check out @stephenjwild.bsky.social's Bayesian starter pack go.bsky.app/UfgChHe

For Bluesky-Curious Econ Lovers, a Quick Start guide to plugging into the economics community here. I wrote it hoping to lower the costs & boost the benefits for folks to engage here. If you think it's useful, please share it. 📉📈 #️⃣#️⃣ aaronsojourner.org/for-bluesky-...

I can handle the porn, I can handle jerks, I can't handle seeing kids getting beat up - literal videos - and all the racist over and undertones. There are still lots of cool people over there but I'll be spending more of my time here

Where are my Bayesian stats/Stan peeps at on here?

@andrew.heiss.phd can you make a Stan hashtag or possibly Bayesian?