David Kane writes in to tell us about his free 8-week data science course for high school students (and others) starting June 3rd. He writes, “this is the 5th time I am offering the course, now using Stan via the brms package and with lots of Bayesian fun.” I don’t know anything about this course, but from the description it looks pretty cool.

Dean Eckles writes: I thought this NPR report was an interesting example of how demand for life advice seems closely connected to low standards of evidence. Like if this didn’t supposedly tell how to live longer, lose weight etc., would anyone bother? Here they’re looking at so called “blue zones” for nutrition advice etc. These places supposedly...

Political scientist Brian Schaffner writes: If you’ve paid any attention at all to the news recently, you have probably seen more than a few stories about how the economy is weighing down President Biden’s reelection hopes. Many of these stories are based on data from polls that ask people about their own economic situations and also ask them what...

It happens to sports stars (for example, Ted Williams). It happens to scientists (followup here, and see also my post deploring the “scientist as hero” narrative). Researchers get used to uncritical media coverage and then, all of a sudden, someone questions their assumptions or their methods, or someone finds out their numbers don’t add up, they’re...

This is Jessica. I don’t usually post multiple times a week, but turns out I have more to say on the topic of machine learning and human problems. “Alignment” is the term used in the AI and ML communities to refer to the goal of aligning machine learning models with human values and preferences, so as to avoid risks ranging from the mundane to the...

From xkcd: Kinda related to this and this.