Christian Düben

SoDa Replicator - YouTube Tutorial on the Monash SoDa Replicator (https://github.com/sodalabsio/soda_replicator), a template for reproducible academic research. Published by Monash Un...

We have published a video #tutorial on the Monash SoDa Replicator, a template for #reproducible #academic #research : youtube.com/playlist?lis.... #git #github #tex #ai #replication #productivity #collaboration

Hence, the package itself is very quick and simple to install from source. It is easy to use and comes with a number of examples.

synthReturn: Synthetic Matching Method for Returns Implements the revised Synthetic Matching Algorithm of Kreitmeir, Lane, and Raschky (2025) &lt;<a href="https://doi.org/10.2139%2Fssrn.3751162" target="_top">doi:10.2139/ssrn.3751162</a>&gt;, building...

David Kreitmeir and I published the synthetic matching method from Kreitmeir et al. (2025) as an #rstats package on CRAN (cran.r-project.org/package=synt...). Whereas my other recent R packages are primarily wrappers of my C++ code, synthReturn is a full R package (Fortran only in dependencies).

cppcontainers: 'C++' Standard Template Library Containers Use 'C++' Standard Template Library containers interactively in R. Includes sets, unordered sets, multisets, unordered multisets, maps, unordered maps, multimaps, unordered multimaps, stacks, queues, ...

My cppcontainers #rstats package (cran.r-project.org/package=cppc...) is back on CRAN. The functionality remains unchanged. It had just been archived on CRAN a few months ago because of NA placeholder values that threw compiler warnings in exotic builds on macOS. #cpp #datascience

Def Con Badge.

Enjoying my first time at @defcon.bsky.social. Amazing talks, demos, etc. so far. And I met famous journalist @jackrhysider.bsky.social whose inspiring work got me interested in #infosec in the first place. I am gathering a lot of insights for my own research.

#AI is even better than I am in adding seg faults to my code 😅. Maybe vibe coding a Fibonacci heap into my spatial analysis was not the best idea. #cpp

I tried #Positron today. Forking and customizing VS Code instead of further pushing RStudio was a good choice. RStudio is not bad, but Positron seems nicer (and better for #rstats development than VS Code itself). Good job @posit.co👍.

Yes, I agree, Python's package management is a terrible user experience. CRAN feels ok to users, but is a bad package developer experience 😅.

That depends on the field. Many people in my environment (economists) have migrated to Python.
Modern R and Python packages are just C and C++ wrappers anyway. Native R and Python are not performant enough for modern tasks.

Statistical programs in Python tend to build on numpy and pandas. Given how mature and stable these packages are, I would not consider these dependencies a major drawback of Python nowadays.
Base R also only has dense matrices. More elaborate matrix types require a package.

Fair point 😄.

Unfortunately, Julia never gained enough traction and never developed a reasonably sophisticated package ecosystem. So, users will stick to the mediocre choices of #rstats and Python. 6/n

According to my own observation, there is a considerable shift from #rstats to Python among empirical researchers. A key driver of this is the Python-first nature of machine learning APIs. I think that #rstats will lose market share to Python, but it will not die soon. 5/n

For now, the simplicity of #rstats makes it a better choice than Python for many users who do not need the versatility of a general purpose programming language. It keeps attracting users from outdated commercial software like Stata or SPSS. 4/n

The poor management of CRAN does not help either. Both R Core and CRAN need to fundamentally change for #rstats remain popular. 3/n

Compare the release notes of base R and #Python over the course of the past years. Python is leaping forward while base R is devoid of innovation. #rstats is kept alive and thriving by its packages. Unfortunately, the severe limitations of base R also limit the scope of package development. 2/n

There is a lot of childish discussion on the future of #rstats recently on this platform. #rstats is my main language and I will stick to it for a while. However, posts calling it perfect and denouncing any critique as invalid are ridiculous. #rstats has flaws that can threaten its future. 1/n

I need to put together a deep learning model and I do not know whether I should go with #pytorch or #tensorflow + #keras. I have a little experience in the latter and none in the former. What would you recommend for someone who does not care about how pythonic a tool is?

I just had to install the most intrusive #software of my life. It automatically starts at boot, but does not show up in the OS's auto startup list. It does not have an exit button or settings. I have to shut down the background process in the process viewer/ task manager each time. 🫣

spaths: Shortest Paths Between Points in Grids Shortest paths between points in grids. Optional barriers and custom transition functions. Applications regarding planet Earth, as well as generally spheres and planes. Optimized for computational per...

The new version of my spaths #rstats package (cran.r-project.org/package=spaths) removes the edge limit (previously 2^31 - 1). Do you need to handle 10 billion edges with custom transition functions? No problem, spaths can do that. #graph #theory

😅 Considering R Core's absence of innovation in base R development, a reimplementation in Rust would certainly be a surprise.

Over the course of the past years, I have received a number of emails asking why conleyreg (my first #rstats package) and fixest produce different results. Contributors to an issue in fixest's GitHub repo have now shown that both are economically correct. The assumptions just differ.

We already got complaints from a data editor when code using pre-processed data took a few hours to run on his laptop. Code on raw data does not run at all or takes weeks on end user devices.

I am curious to see, if data editors are ready to download a TB of data per spatial project.

My wife is looking for a #job in #Melbourne, Australia.

- #Chemical #engineer specialized in #water #treatment
- Master's degree
- Multiple years of experience in water treatment and science education
- Fluent in 4 - 6 languages
- Can start immediately

Feel free to reach out for further questions.

I hope the economists here forgive me for not throwing in general equilibrium. To make it accessible for non-economists, I restrict the content to very intuitive concepts.

The Housing Market is a Market An Intuitive Guide to the Economics of Housing Affordability

I just published a #blog post on #housing #affordability: medium.com/@cdueben/the.... It aims to create a better intuition of how the housing market works. The post uses simple, non-technical language to communicate the topic to a broad audience.

I received my absentee ballot documents for the #German #federal #election today. The election is in three days and I live in Australia. Thanks for sending this on time 😄. #Bundestagswahl #Briefwahl

#CRAN needs maintainer elections driven by the #Rstats community. CRAN's current maintenance is unbearable.

(iv) Quickly get back to a project after not having worked on it for a while - just grab an issue and start from there. (v) Cleanly split solved and unsolved issues, while keeping the documentation. (vi) Track what everyone is currently doing based on issue assignment. 2/2