Gavin Simpson

Updated my “Reproducible data analysis using tidyverse R” slides in preparation for a workshop at UVA tomorrow: rpubs.com/bpbond/1392825 #rstats

Yes, the VOD will be available (I think at the same link) shortly after the end of the livestream and it will remain available indefinitely

Lecturer in Physical Oceanography (ATR1734) in University of East Anglia | UEA View details and apply for this Lecturer in Physical Oceanography (ATR1734) vacancy in University of East Anglia. Faculty of Science School of Environmental Sciences Lecturer in Physical Oceano...

We are advertising for a Lecturer in Physical Oceanography, closing date 31 March.

If you have research interests in the shelf seas, estuarine and coastal oceans then this could be for you!

And you could do research using UEA's fleet of ocean gliders

vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/20...

LOL, it’s meant to be me (the geographer) looking up to the scientists at the pinnacle of academia.

It’s from an insult the Lindzen, a noted climate, denialist made against the IPCC (as being composed of people from the bottom of the heap, like geographers)

I have two degrees in geography

Basically, they’re just GAMs but with penalised splines applied at different scales of data, average of all data, group specific smooths, subject specific random smooths etc, but the paper goes into the detail c. 2018-2019

gavinsimpson gratia Q A · Discussions Explore the GitHub Discussions forum for gavinsimpson gratia in the Q A category.

There’ll be a live Q&A—post questions in advance via the gratia GitHub Discussions (tag livestream), and upvote the ones you want answered.

Post your questions: github.com/gavinsimpson...

During the livestream, I'll be covering:

• what GAMs are and how they work
• recent mgcv updates (incl. Hierarchical GAMs)
• new features in gratia
• deeper inference with marginaleffects

What's new in the world of Generalized Additive Models YouTube video by Bottom of the Heap

🚨 GAMs have moved on—so it’s time for an update.

On March 3, 2026 (17:00–19:00 CET) I’ll be livestreaming an updated introduction to Generalized Additive Models in R

📺 YouTube livestream link: youtube.com/live/A9U8e1K...

#RStats #mgcv #GAMs #gratia #statistics 🧪

All my #rstats ebooks are now in the quarto format, and hosted on Quarto Pub. Their old bookdown links will all be dead by the weekend.

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European leaders warn of ‘downward spiral’ after Trump threatens tariffs over Greenland – Europe live Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland will face tariffs from 1 February

Isn’t it about time that European countries tax the shit out of the massive US tech firms looting them (they exploit every loophole to pay relatively little tax)?

If he raises tariffs, we raise taxes on their revenue.

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

How the Russian Higher School of Economics supports the war against Ukraine Russia's Higher School of Economics has become a center for propaganda and support for military action against Ukraine. Students of the university are actively raising funds for military equipment for...

How HSE supports Russia's war: trap.org.ua/en/publications/how-the-russian-higher-school-of-economics-supports-the-war-against-ukraine/
HSE seminar series & speakers (incl. many international ones, from top universities): sites.google.com/view/hse-econ-seminar/hse_seminar

While Ukrainians face 30+ hour blackouts, Moscow's Higher School of Economics hosts seminars with top international speakers-then uses the same rooms for drone fundraisers. Academics don't get paid for seminars. So why present at an institution actively funding mass murder of Ukrainians? #Econsky

Bayesian views of generalized additive modelling Generalized additive models (GAMs) are a commonly used, flexible framework applied to many problems in statistical ecology. GAMs are often considered to be a purely frequentist framework (`generalized...

I’d start with Dave Miller’s recent paper on the Bayesian Interpretation of GAMs in MEE arxiv.org/abs/1902.01330

The equivalence holds for the case of a Bayesian view of smoothing as that looks like the REML criterion of a mixed effects model

If this is a general “penalties = priors” thing I don’t think that is generally true. There are specific cases where they work out to be equivalent to a particular (possibly improper) prior. This is what underlies mgcv and IIRC also INLA (but I’m less familiar with the latter)

I think that would be using an “old style” or “scheffer style” random effect interpretation sensu Hodges. We don’t tend to think our spline is a draw from a multivariate Gaussian as if it were some weird set of random effects but we use this as a computational convenience, AKA “new style” ranefs

Isn’t this called maximum a posteriori estimation? What mgcv does is an empirical Bayesian edtimate. The “penalty” is an improper Gaussian prior on the smooth coefs and lambda is inversely proportional to a variance parameter. I’m away from my books & other stuff but I think this is in Wood 2011

📈 Registrations now open!
Time Series Analysis & Forecasting in R
🗓 20–24 July| 🌍 Online

A very hands-on course on dynamic GLMs/GAMs for ecological time series using {mvgam} & {brms}. Bayesian models, nonlinear effects, forecasting & live coding in R.

www.physalia-courses.org/courses-work...

Our first symposium of #TIBS2026 explores the exciting field of quantitative #Paleoecology. Discover how #data, #models, and innovative #methods are used to unlock and analyze the extensive ancient ecological record to address important scientific and practical questions.

Ok science hivemind 🧪. I have a distinct memory of an awesome graphic in a paper about how environmental filtering and biotic interactions determine whether an organism can live in any given place. Almost like multiple filter layers on top of another. Does anyone have a preferred graphic of this?

Interested in Species Distribution Modeling (SDM) and Ecological Niche Modeling (ENM) in R? Don’t miss this chance to level up your skills! The course is nearly full — www.physalia-courses.org/courses-work...

#SDM #ENM #RStats #Ecology #DataScience

If you mentor scientific writers, teach a course with written assignments, or anything similar, you know how much work is involved, and how difficult it can be to provide the guidance developing writers need. This book is for you!
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Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach Scientific writing is hard (but my book can help) – but teaching scientific writing is even harder. Nearly all of us teach writing – sometimes in a formal classroom setting, sometimes as advisors t…

Over the holiday, while folks were on well-deserved breaks, our new book was released!

Mentoring writers is hard - we can make it easier for you. Please help spread the word - repost this, tell your colleagues, etc.

scientistseessquirre...
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course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students.

I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

We are recruiting several PhD students. If you are interested in conservation conflicts, population ecology, quantitative ecology, or biodiversity, check these projects out (links in the thread, feel free to reach out):

It’s publication day! “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences” Ok, we’re seriously excited – not for tonight’s fireworks, but because after several years of work, our new book is officially published today! That’s right – Teaching and Mentoring Writers i…

It's official - my new book is officially published today! If you mentor science students who write - grad or undergrad - you're the reason we wrote this. Mentoring/teaching writing is hard; but we can make it easier!

Congratulations Stephen 🎉🍾

Here is a little piece about the day of my final Monkey Cage recording - a couple of weeks ago in beautiful #manchester www.bigissue.com/opinion/robi...

Goodbye, Monkey Cage - not as infinite as I imagined

Photo showing a freshly baked rich fruit cake that is my mum’s family Christmas cake recipe

Probably should have been made a month or more ago, but better late than never. Made my mum’s family Christmas cake recipe for the first time since moving to 🇩🇰

A mystery seed from a Breckland, eastern England ghostpingo core as found by @hayleymcmechan.bsky.social. help oh botanists!!! 1 mm scale @annasolcova.bsky.social @jo-the-botanist.bsky.social @bramblebotanist.bsky.social @timholtwilson.bsky.social