Donald Szlosek

"Uncooperative statistician": the term used (typically by a senior clinician) to describe a well-trained and knowledgeable statistician who refuses to conduct flawed or fraudulent research.

If you've ever wanted to learn how to make beautiful websites with #QuartoPub and #rstats , check out this workshop I'm giving in a couple weeks! It'll be a blast (and we're covering Quarto's brand new _brand dot yaml system!)

What Americans die from and the causes of death the US media reports on Causes of death in the US in 2023 Heart disease (29%) Cancer (26%) Accidents (9.5%) Stroke (6.9%) Lower respiratory diseases (6.2%) Alzheimer's disease (4.8%) Diabetes (4.0%) Kidney failure (2.4%) Liver disease (2.2%) Homicide (<1%) Terrorism (<0.001%)| COVID-19 (2.1%) Influenza/Pneu monia (19%6) Media coverage of these causes of death in 2023 in... The New York Times The Washington Post Fox News Heart disease (2.8%) Heart disease (2.9%) Cancer (4.1%) Cancer (4.7%) Accidents (5.9%) Cancer (3.8%) Accidents (6.1%) Accidents (9.7%) Suicide (4.1%) Suicide (3.3%) COVID-19 (6.0%) COVID-19 (7.9%) Suicide (3.8%) COVID-19 (5.3%) Drug overdose (7.5%) Drug overdose (9.8%) Drug overdose (9.5%) Cancer (26%) Accidents (9.5%) Stroke (6.9%) Lower respiratory diseases (6.2%) Alzheimer's disease (4.8%) Diabetes (4.0%) Kidney failure (24%) Suicide (2.1%0) COVID-19 (2.1%0 Homicide (42%) Homicide (52%) Homicide (46%) Terrorism (18%) Terrorism (12%) Terrorism (11%) Homicide (<1%) Terrorism (<0.001%) Note: Based on the share of causes of death in the US and the share of mentions for each of the causes in the New York Times, the Washington Post and Fox News. All values are normalized to 100%, so the shares are relative to all deaths caused by the 12 most common causes + drug overdoses, homicides and terrorism. These causes account for more than 75% of deaths in the US. A "media mention" is a published article in one of the outlets which mentions the cause (e,g. "influenza) or related keywords (e.g. "fu") least twice. Data sources: Media mentions from Media Cloud (2025): deaths data from the US CDC (2025) and Global Terrorism Index.| CC BY

Nice chart from @ourworldindata.org showing the contrast between what Americans die of (heart disease and cancer) v what the US media reports on (homicide and terrorism). This naturally leads to it being trickier to build a fact based world view
ourworldindata.org/does-the-new...

If I'm doing a lot of written work, I would get tired of writing the sigma notation or the triangular numbers you suggested. I see this as an easy and fast way of saving my wrists from cramping!

In Ch 19 (nyu-cdsc.github.io/learningr/as...) of his 2nd edition, Kruschke used *residual* SD as a standardizer for group differences from a multilevel ANCOVA. Is there any precedent for using a *residual* SD as a standardizer for a standardized mean difference effect size? #RStats

What is the term for a factorial type operation, but with summation instead of products? (Pardon if this seems a bit beginner, this is my first post in math - trying to improve my knowledge while tackling Project Euler problems) I'm aware of Sigma notation, but is there a function/nam...

great discussion: math.stackexchange.com/questions/60...

I always wondered if there was a shorthand for summation similar to factorials #math #mathsky #statssky #statistics

Thinking about odds ratios...

An odds is a ratio of events to non-events. For example, if the event is survival, the odds of survival is the number of survivors per death. If the event is getting a disease, the odds is the number of diseased individuals per healthy individual.

For me this is a hard red line in psychological science. If you advocate the use of "silicon samples" you do not understand what it is we're supposed to be doing (and likely don't understand LLMs, or are a grifter). Luckily I haven't seen much of this among people I'd consider my peer group.

The best evidence Tylenol causes autism isn't great On Monday, RFK Jr announced Tylenol ‘causes’ autism referencing three studies as evidence. Let's dive in.

If you’ve been following the RFK Jr autism news, then you’ve probably heard that there’s a systematic review “proving” Tylenol causes autism.

Here’s my review of that paper👇🏼

open.substack.com/pub/epiellie...

Which one should I do next? The big Swedish study that RFK & his buddies pretend doesn’t exist? Or one of the other 2 studies he mentioned at the press conference?

Vote by commenting!

It is *impossible* to "adjust for socioeconomic status" in a regression model. Discuss.

And good morning! 🌞

Just posted an updated/revised version of this “Statistical Methods in Public Policy Research” chapter, now under review post-R&R 🤞

I'm kinda partial and unbiased here, but I really really like this piece!

HTML/PDF: stats.andrewheiss.com/snoopy-spring/
SocArXiv: doi.org/10.31235/osf...

The single most undervalued fact of linear algebra: matrices are graphs, and graphs are matrices.

Encoding matrices as graphs is a cheat code, making complex behavior simple to study. #Statistics #Mathemathis #Math

Excellent example from @tivadardanka.bsky.social

rconsortium.github.io/RplusAI_webs...

R+AI - Join us at R+AI 2025, our inaugural conference dedicated to the open-source R community and every facet of artificial intelligence - 100% online

Data Science programs often put too little emphasis on causal inference, and it’s hurting their graduates on the job market! The econometrics people are coming for your jobs lol

Will I be celebrating my birthday on October 20th? No!

Will I be celebrating World #Statistics Day by joining several much cooler panelists to discuss the topic "data we can trust"? Absolutely!

🗓️ October 20th, 1pm AEDT
📍 Online webinar
🔗 statsoc.org.au/event-6365055

#statssky #databs #datascience

Tell me something you do when you code that other people would tell you that you shouldn't do.

Tell me the rules you break!

I'll go first: I work in untitled files in the wrong project directories all the time. Like, all the time. Yes, I do tend to lose things 😂 #databs #rstats #python

Did you know there are two contests happening right now? ✨

📊 Table Contest: use any #RStats or #Python package.
📈 Plotnine Contest: use the Plotnine #Python package.

Show off your skills, share your work, and earn some well-deserved open-source cred!

Learn more: posit.co/blog/announc...

Anyone else ever feel like this? #StatsSky #Statistics

A nice discussion on stats.exchange on central limit theorem including how Socrates would have handled it #Statistics #StatsSky: stats.stackexchange.com/questions/47...

Jason Brinkley talks about his job search in AMSTAT News.

@amstatnews.bsky.social covers @drjasonbrinkley.bsky.social 's recent job search. It is a great piece, #statssky #hpss #geronsky and #AIsky.

It’s JAMA time, baby! Junk science presented as public health research
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/09/22/i...

Tomorrow (9/23) is the final session of our Essentials of R for Statistical Analysis workshop series. Open to all @cornelluniversity.bsky.social. Join us at 2pm!
cscu.cornell.edu/workshop/the...
@cornellgrad.bsky.social @research-and-innovation.cornell.edu

I wish more meta analyses reported on the change in primary endpoint between trial registration and publication.

A common challenge in measurement in any context. E.g. some hospitals have worse outcomes because they take the hardest cases *because* they are the best hospital, etc. It's a different kind of problem than to that of e.g. university rankings, which just flat out measure the wrong things.

From Zero to a Dockerized Development Environment in Minutes with GitHub Repository Templates An effective approach for setting up a development environment

The following tutorial focuses on efficiently setting up a new Dockerized development environment with minimal time using GitHub repository templates with VScode and the Dev Containers extension.

The tutorial is available on Medium:

medium.com/p/6193f6d4ecb4

#docker #github #mlops #vscode

I was messing around with a few beta regression packages around that time. Needed survey weights so landed on glmmTMB