Alex Franks

Is there a Half-Life for the Success Rates of AI Agents? — Toby Ord Building on the recent empirical work of Kwa et al. (2025), I show that within their suite of research-engineering tasks the performance of AI agents on longer-duration tasks can be explained by an ex...

Not saying that I totally buy it, but this post outlines an interesting justification based on modeling the half life of a "fatal mistake" using tools from survival analysis: www.tobyord.com/writing/half...

Meant to say AOS.

I do think that stats depts should be doing much more to emphasize data analysis. One of the best ways to generate idea for stats methods research is to be intimately familiar with data analysis and the challenges that come with it.

In general, I think nowadays most departments would be equally happy with an applied statistician publishing in AOAS, JASA A&CS and JCGS as they would publishing in AOS.

What is most valued at tenure time also depends on what kind of department. E.g. as you allude to, a biostat dept will have very different criteria than a stats dept in say, a business school, which definitely skews more toward AOAS style publications.

I like to think of academic statistics on a continuum: applied, methods and then theory. In my opinion, a "strong" stats dept should have faculty at a range of points on this continuum.

Congestion pricing by the # ‘s 6 months in:
* 67k fewer drivers entering zone daily
* Delays in Holland Tunnel down 65%
* Traffic deaths down 32% so far in 2025
* $500m projected this year for MTA capital improvements
* B’way attendance +12%
* Subway ridership +7%

So yes this program is a SUCCESS.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

This is downtown Santa Barbara right now. The No Kings protest stretches for over a mile along the water. The cars who drive by are all honking in support. Probably the biggest protest this community has ever seen.

We feed you.
They hunt us.

At the risk of sounding like a big nerd, I love when assumed/perceived trends are found to be the result of the Simpson's paradox! Here, the gender-equality paradox is getting fried! 🧪 #science 📊 #stats #equality

@noahgreifer.bsky.social was my post-doc and I cannot recommend him more highly if you need a super smart statistical consultant / programmer. He is the force behind MatchIt, cobalt, and other packages, and is also just a fantastic team member.

Trump proposes unprecedented budget cuts to US science Huge reductions, if enacted, could have ‘catastrophic’ effects on US competitiveness and the scientific pipeline, critics say.

Trump proposes unprecedented budget cuts for US science in next fiscal year
NASA cut by 24%
NIH cut by 40%
EPA cut by 55%
NSF cut by 56%
Analysis from @maxkozlov.bsky.social @dangaristo.bsky.social @alexwitze.bsky.social and @nature.com team
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The man at left separated the mother and baby at right. The mother is now in Venezuela. Baby daughter, in foster care in the US, exact location unknown.

Dad? He's in CECOT prison without trial — because he had tattoos.

🧵In March I wrote about how Trump's attacks on science & universities followed the authoritarian playbook & set out Qs as warning signs for escalation.

🚨 THESE ARE NOW HAPPENING

This 🧵is on how those warning sign Qs have been realised

full post:
christinapagel.substack.com/p/warning-si...

1/15

Wow. Randall Monroe is not fucking around *at all*.

“When the men approached me, my first thought was that they …. wanted to harm me.”

As a woman who spent a career working alone in weird and dangerous situations, my first concern was being hurt.

Thanks, @cambridgeday.bsky.social for being one of the few news outlets to capture that.

Tufts student details harrowing transport by ICE, lack of food and medical care in detention Rümeysa Öztürk's sworn statement was filed alongside a motion from her attorneys seeking her immediate release from detention while they fight the revocation of her visa.

She is still in custody www.wbur.org/news/2025/04...

US map via scienceimpacts.org visualization of economic loss due to IDC cuts to 15% as part of Feb 7, 2025 executive order, with shading denoting intensity of cuts.

Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs.

Find out how your community may be impacted.

Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org

a 🧵

What people in every part of higher education need to understand is that Republicans now want to do to universities what they’ve tried to do to labor unions: erase them from the institutional landscape. The question is how much you want to collaborate in your own destruction.

This is completely terrifying, a huge violation of the first amendment, and part of the coopting of a distorted version of anti-semitism to justify persecution of people speaking out against Israel's genocide. And the broader pursuit of a police state.

This is horrible to post, but I may as well post it. We are essentially shutting down research operations in my group, which is focused on treatments for pediatric brain cancer. I’m a well funded investigator, and there’s no choice. Science can’t function without the stability of NIH

I just heard this as well. The entire staff of the National Center for Education Statistics, created in 1867, has been fired.

Inchworm?

DOGE savings (WSJ): $2.6b

TSLA subsidies (10 years): $15b

Annual increase in deficit: $900b

Cuts to Medicare: $880b

If people were really just dying from chronic diseases then how come they weren’t dying from their chronic diseases until after March, 2020?

If anyone who receives this would like help writing a suitable prompt injection for when they use an LLM to evaluate responses, I am at your service. DM or @hmason.64 on Signal.

Super cool! How'd you make these? Is there a repo you can share?

Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared. ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis is the most detailed look yet into a rise in life-threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss under Texas’ abortion ban.

NEW: Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared.

ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis is the most detailed look yet into a rise in life-threatening complications for women experiencing pregnancy loss under Texas’ abortion ban.