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I’m not sure who scheduled ODSC and PyConUS during the same week, but I am unhappy with their decisions. Last Tuesday I presented a talk and co-presented a workshop at ODSC, and on Thursday I presented a tutorial at PyCon. If you would like to follow along with my very busy week, here are the resources: Practical Bayesian Modeling with PyMC Co-presented with Alex Fengler for ODSC East 2025 In this tutorial, we explore Bayesian regression using PyMC – the... Read More Read More The post My very busy week appeared first on Probably Overthinking It.
The third edition of Think Stats is on its way to the printer! You can preorder now from Bookshop.org and Amazon (those are affiliate links), or if you can’t wait to get a paper copy, you can read the free, online version here. Here’s the new cover, still featuring a suspicious-looking archerfish. If you are not familiar with the previous editions, Think Stats is an introduction to practical methods for exploring and visualizing data, discovering relationships and trends, and communicating... Read More Read More The post Announcing Think Stats 3e appeared first on Probably Overthinking It.
The most recent data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) provides a first look at people born in the 2000s as young adults and an updated view of people born in the 1990s at the peak of their child-bearing years. Compared to previous generations at the same ages, these cohorts have fewer children, and they are less likely to say they intend to have children. Unless their plans change, trends toward lower fertility are likely to continue for... Read More Read More The post Young Adults Want Fewer Children appeared first on Probably Overthinking It.
This is the last in a series of excerpts from Elements of Data Science, now available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. This article is based on the Recidivism Case Study, which is about algorithmic fairness. The goal of the case study is to explain the statistical arguments presented in two articles from 2016: Both are about COMPAS, a statistical tool used in the justice system to assign defendants a “risk score” that is intended to reflect the risk that they... Read More Read More The post Algorithmic Fairness appeared first on Probably Overthinking It.
More in science
Close to 900 million people across the Global South live in densely packed urban slums, which often sit in floodplains. A new study finds that one in three slum dwellers is at risk of "disastrous" flooding, a risk that is set to grow as warming spurs more intense rainfall around the world. Read more on E360 →
In theory, quantum physics can bypass the hard mathematical problems at the root of modern encryption. A new proof shows how. The post Quantum Scientists Have Built a New Math of Cryptography first appeared on Quanta Magazine
For centuries, the Native people of North America used controlled burns to manage the continent's forests. In an e360 interview, ecologist Loris Daniels talks about the long history of Indigenous burning and why the practice must be restored to protect against catastrophic fires. Read more on E360 →
The beginning of a RET poster session Research Experience for Teachers (RET) programs are an example of the kind of programs that the National Science Foundation funds which are focused on K12 (and broader) education. This summer I hosted a high school physics teacher in my lab for 6 weeks, where he worked on a brief project, with one of my doctoral students helping out in a mentoring role. Just yesterday was the big poster session for all of the participants in the program, and it was very enjoyable to talk with a whole cadre of high school science teachers from across the greater Houston area about their projects and their experiences. Readers may be more familiar with the sibling Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs, which give undergraduate students the chance to work for 10 weeks or so in a lab that is very likely not at their home institution. REUs are a great way for students interested in research to get broad exposure to new topics, meet people and acquire new skills, and for some, figure out whether they like research (and maybe which topics are exciting to them). The educational goal of REUs is clear: providing direct research experience to interested undergrads, ideally while advancing a research project and for some small fraction of students resulting in an eventual publication. RET programs are different: They are intended as professional development. The teachers are exposed to new topics, hopefully a fun research environment, and they are encouraged to think carefully about how they can take the concepts they learn and translate those for the classroom. I am very much not an expert in education research, but there is evidence (see here, for example) that teachers who participate in these programs get a great deal of satisfaction and have lower attrition from teaching professions. (Note that it's hard to do statistics well on questions like that, since the population of teachers that seek out opportunities like this may be a special subset of the total population of teachers.) An idea that makes sense to me: Enhancing the motivation and job satisfaction of a teacher can have a larger cumulative impact on educating students than an individual research project for a single student. It would be a great shame if RET and REU programs are victims of large-scale cuts at NSF. The NSF is the only science agency with education as part of its mission (at least historically). All the more reason to try to persuade appropriators to not follow the draconian presidential budget request for the agency.
