Implementing “reasoning” as “just keep talking to yourself” feels so weird & hacky. But maybe not, according to this? They show that just-predicting-the-next-word is inherently unable to learn to solve some (permutation) problems unless you “pad” with extra thought tokens. arxiv.org/abs/2509.24125

Message passing for epidemiological interventions on networks with loops https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21596

Had missed this paper! It's great arxiv.org/abs/2502.01177

Are you studying animal sociality? Confused about the "non-independence" of social network data: what on earth are they? are they threatening your results? should you attempt to get rid of them? A thread summarising a part of our new paper (ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...).

🎓 I've joined the PhD in Complex Systems & Data Science at @vcsi.bsky.social to work w/ @lhd.bsky.social & @juniperlov.bsky.social to explore social (complex) dynamics 🔬 Huge thanks to @joanagsa.bsky.social & Lília Perfeito for helping me get ready for this chapter 🚀 Excited for this next step!

🐒🕸️ New preprint! Confused about how to model animal social networks? ASNA can be confusing—but also full of opportunity. We break down 5 common misunderstandings in animal social network analysis and share solutions from behavioural ecology, anthro, stats, & network science. Hope it helps! A 🧵

All from an amazing interdisciplinary group 👥: @benkawam.bsky.social 🌟, @jgyou.bsky.social, Dan Franks, Connor Philson, Marijtje van Duijn, @jordanhart96.bsky.social, MB McElreath, @rmcelreath.bsky.social, @eapower.bsky.social, Cody Ross, @steglich.bsky.social, & @ljnbrent.bsky.social!

Leto Peel officially opens #NetSci2025, followed by Sonia Kefi's keynote

And the code is live here: github.com/DynamicaLab/... With @allard.bsky.social and the never-online Simon Lizotte (but you can find him at siliz4.github.io)

Hear me discuss our new paper written with the inimitable Laurent Hébert-Dufresne and colleagues! @lhd.bsky.social #Complexity #Physiology #Governance www.nature.com/articles/s44...

On this day in 2023, the Vermont Complex Systems Institute (vermontcomplexsystems.org), TGIR Center (www.med.uvm.edu/tgircobre/home) & @sfiscience.bsky.social joined for an event on interacting contagions Our work, "One pathogen does not an epidemic make," is now online: arxiv.org/abs/2504.15053

So glad to have @jgyou.bsky.social give an intriguing lecture on contagion modeling and network inference in our network science class!

I've been guest editing a focus issue for Journal of Physics: Complexity with @jgyou.bsky.social, @gcant.bsky.social, and Cate De Bacco on Statistical Inference and Machine Learning for Complex Networks. See iopscience.iop.org/collections/..., and feel free to get in touch with any questions!

You should find that haircut again.

Hate The Game, the book, is only one month away! Pre-order yours anywhere books are sold. 📖✨ Freakonomics coauthor Steven Levitt called it “Fabulous—unlike any economics book I’ve ever read!

We're excited to share our MAR10 day discounts! - $1 off of Mario's Time Machine - A free wallpaper

1/ New paper @pnas.org on the structure of mutualistic #networks between individuals plants and frugivore species. Last chapter of @elequintero.bsky.social's PhD thesis doi.org/10.1073/pnas... #ecopubs

Wastewater from airplane toilets? We introduce a global Aircraft-Based Wastewater Surveillance Network (WWSN) for pandemic monitoring in Nature Medicine 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415... Aircraft-based wastewater surveillance allows for real-time, non-invasive monitoring of global pathogen spread Short 🧵

On a similar note I got spoiled by Dr Watson in Julia. Is there a good Python equivalent?

We are reaching the time of year when I start hearing from undergrads who are looking for summer internships. Obviously, they should all apply to Pew, but what other research orgs have internship programs that I can tell them about? What other opportunities can I share with them?

Comparison may be a thief of joy, but it is an undoubtably interesting statistical modeling problem. In my latent chapter I go deep into the general problem of modeling comparisons between pairs of abstract items. HTML: betanalpha.github.io/assets/chapt... PDF: betanalpha.github.io/assets/chapt...

Fully-funded PhD position on the cultural evolution of environmental management! Link evolution, ecology and behavioral science to study how people manage environmental challenges in the ACE Lab (timwaring.info). Position Details: timwaring.info/wp-content/u...

I preemptively declare paper bankruptcy. Anything published on arXiv during the next 3 weeks will be permanently memory black holed.

A project with friends from the Vermont Complex Systems Institute @juniperlov.bsky.social @jstonge.bsky.social @nwlandry.bsky.social @jgyou.bsky.social Funded by an ambitious AUDACE project from friends and co-authors from Université de Sherbrooke. Started in the Green Mountains two years ago.

1/ Influenza wastewater activity levels are currently low across the US, aside from conspicuous areas in CA where #H5N1 is spreading in dairy cows. A deeper dive into the Wastewater Scan data paints a very concerning picture and should add to our sense of urgency.

what idiot called it async/await instead of wait/what

Gaussian approximation of a target distribution: mean-field versus full-covariance! Below shows a simple gradient descent on KL(q||p)

Having a sides-only Thanksgiving this year. No turkey, just carbs and gravy. Modern problems require modern solutions.

The DOGE should get rid of the NSF COA template and then fold

I'm teaching Applied Probability and my cold take is that the standard normal is basically useless for practitioners in an age of R.

Greetings recent followers. ┏┓ ┃┃╱╲ in ┃╱╱╲╲ this ╱╱╭╮╲╲ house ▔▏┗┛▕▔ we ╱▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔╲ don't just talk about data generating processes; we actually model them and then critique our assumptions. ╱╱┏┳┓╭╮┏┳┓ ╲╲ ▔▏┗┻┛┃┃┗┻┛▕▔

Québec indie game studios are killing it lately. Just in the past year or so, I've played three amazing games that *happened* to be from my hometown. Way to go!

Reminder that if you put stuff on Bluesky can be accessed by basically anybody in the world, and it's totally legal for other people to train on your data Even if the Bluesky team says they won't. Also AI is good actually

I am reposting this here! I'm co-editing a focus Issue on "Statistical Inference and Machine Learning for Complex Networks" At the Journal of Physics Complexity. iopscience.iop.org/collections/... Feel free to get in touch if you have questions: [email protected].

Features users want: - group DMs - custom notification filters - something about gifs Features we are prepared to deliver: - servers not going down under the load of most of twitter joining - some cute animations when you expand a picture in your feed

Want to contribute and help lead our community? NetSci 2025 is soliciting applications to its program committee! We especially encourage early career researchers to apply. forms.gle/98rhcJeoVVZG...

🚨 The Colorado Index of Complex Networks (icon.colorado.edu) is reborn! ICON 2.0 indexes 699 distinct research-quality network data sets, classified into 6 domains (Social, Biological, Information, Economic, Technology, Transportation) and 53 subdomains /1 #networkscience

Excited to share a pre-print about web scraping for research! We're happy to receive feedback on how we frame this issue and try to build some paths forward for researchers. w/ @orangechair.org, Gabe Maldoff, @solmg.bsky.social, Zeve Sanderson, & @michaelzimmer.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2410.23432

Let's close these triads!

Sharing the Vermont Complex Systems Institute starter pack! A list of core members, alumni, and external faculty 🤝 go.bsky.app/D46bnkS

Watching StanCon videos -- Stan coming to the browser is super neat. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vl7...

"A tensor factorization model of multilayer network interdependence" - a multilayer stochastic blockmodel, with tensors! from @jugander.bsky.social and coauthors Paper: jmlr.org/papers/v25/2... Code: github.com/izabelaguiar... #stats #mlsky 📉📈

Bluesky now has 13M+ users, the @atproto.com developer ecosystem continues to grow, and we’ve shipped features like DMs and video! We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $15M Series A to continue growing the community, investing in Trust and Safety, and supporting the dev ecosystem.

Trying out one of these starter packs for statistics and data folks, with something of an academic lean! go.bsky.app/7TBN5rX

🚨Job alert!🚨 Come join us at the Inverse Complexity Lab! @invcomplexity.bsky.social We’re hiring a post-doctoral researcher to join our group at IT:U, Linz, Austria. skewed.de/lab/call.html Deadline is 30 Nov 2024. 1/8

🥁 New paper out in Science Advances! 🥁 We present a novel mathematical framework to describe social contacts in epidemic models stratified by multiple dimensions. Big thanks to @netscience.bsky.social for leading a big effort! Check out the full paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Don't like the X vibes at all anymore, moving here mostly.

Obligatory

Bluesky is built to give users control over their social spaces online. Today, we’re open sourcing Ozone, a tool that lets users collaboratively inspect and label content on the network. Later this week, we’re opening up the ability for users to run their own independent moderation services.