Daniel G. Saunders

Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 24d

It’s become fashionable in some circles to reject decision theory (and other basic statistical ideas) for vaguely political reasons.

There are valid critiques—but also some worth being wary of.

Some thoughts:
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/10/17/s...

Separating the whack from the chaff in critiques of decision theory | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

Philosophy of Science Association @philsci.bsky.social · Oct 6

✨Don't forget✨ PSA Office Hours are back! Join us this Thursday, October 9 at 12 PM EST with S. Andrew Schroeder. Sign up at the link below to save your spot!

www.philsci.org/psa_...

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Aug 13

This is the classic shorter piece mechanism.ucsd.edu/bill/teachin... and he has a book length treatment of similar ideas in Representing and Intervening.

mechanism.ucsd.edu

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Aug 13

Ian Hacking and Hasok Chang are big proponents of thinking about philosophy of science in terms of actions and skills. I love this paper by Chang: d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/52270296/201...

d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Jul 1

Woo congrats to Nathan and your team! Excited to read this :)

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Jun 25

Okay but what about when you are just trynna have a good time making stuff?

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Jun 4

It’s an amazing package. The website also has a bunch of neat strategies to diagnose hmc samplers, ones I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere.

Adrian Seyboldt @aseyboldt.bsky.social · Jun 3

🥧 nutpie got a website now! pymc-devs.github.io/nutpie/
If you're doing Bayesian inference with PyMC or Stan, this might be worth checking out. Nutpie can sample PyMC and Stan model, and typically twice as fast.
#BayesianStats #PyMC #Stan

Nutpie

pymc-devs.github.io

Adrian Seyboldt @aseyboldt.bsky.social · Jun 3

🥧 nutpie got a website now! pymc-devs.github.io/nutpie/
If you're doing Bayesian inference with PyMC or Stan, this might be worth checking out. Nutpie can sample PyMC and Stan model, and typically twice as fast.
#BayesianStats #PyMC #Stan

Nutpie

pymc-devs.github.io

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · May 22

“We didn’t ever hide that that’s what it was. People were mad because we were calling them effects,” she says. “Then they say to us, but they’re just associations with 20 covariates. But the point is we said that from the beginning. They’re associations with 20 covariates.”

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · May 22

Friend telling me about how few statisticians are actually Bayesians. It's a real shame how far we have fallen from God's light.

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · May 13

Insanely bad. I manually turn off the tab function whenever I’m about to be notebooking for a while.

Aki Vehtari @avehtari.bsky.social · May 5

Mitzi Morris's new case study mc-stan.org/learn-stan/c... illustrates with hierarchical and spatial models the better efficiency of the new sum_to_zero_vector constrained parameter introduced in Stan 2.36 (2024-12). Mitzi used CmdStanPy, but the Stan code is the same with all interfaces

The Sum-to-Zero Constraint in Stan

mc-stan.org

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Feb 20

Great I’m gonna try to make it!

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Feb 19

But which day tho?

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Feb 13

It’s out 😮 I just checked last week to be teased with a mere abstract.

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Jan 15

A brief history of tech disruptions:
2010: We are going to disrupt that horrible corporation, Blockbuster
2012: We are going to disrupt those awful cab monopolies
2014: We are going to disrupt the record labels
2022: We are going to disrupt reading and writing

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Dec 30

Feels extremely true, watching how business leadership reacts to the long search process involved in finding a good model. The bayesian workflow literature largely assumes academic contexts where research papers are expected to be in development for a year or more.

Baxter Eaves @baxtereaves.bsky.social · Dec 19

PPLs have struggled to gain traction in industry. Conventional wisdom blames scaling. I argue that PPLs' challenges aren't about scaling at all. They're about learning. And sometimes, to go faster, we need to slow down.

heresy.ai/a-better-ppl/

#bayesian #machinelearning

Making PPLs More Useful With Two New Operators | Heresy

Probabilistic programming is a counter play to black box machine learning. Probabilistic programming practitioners seek to build interpretable models of phenomena and to captu…

heresy.ai

PyMC Labs @pymc-labs.bsky.social · Dec 24

🎄✨ 𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐇𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐏𝐲𝐌𝐂 𝐋𝐚𝐛𝐬!

🎁 This holiday season, we want to thank everyone in our community for your support and enthusiasm. We’re grateful to see so many of you using PyMC-Marketing and CausalPy

#MerryChristmas #HappyNewYear #PyMCMarketing #CausalPy #Gratitude

Baxter Eaves @baxtereaves.bsky.social · Dec 19

PPLs have struggled to gain traction in industry. Conventional wisdom blames scaling. I argue that PPLs' challenges aren't about scaling at all. They're about learning. And sometimes, to go faster, we need to slow down.

heresy.ai/a-better-ppl/

#bayesian #machinelearning

Making PPLs More Useful With Two New Operators | Heresy

Probabilistic programming is a counter play to black box machine learning. Probabilistic programming practitioners seek to build interpretable models of phenomena and to captu…

heresy.ai

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Nov 29

This piece deftly puts words to my frustration with the way we talk about AI. It’s about education but it feels apt in business, software, etc
mail.cyberneticforests.com/how-does-ope...

How Does OpenAI Imagine K-12 Education?

Close Reading OpenAI's training module for educators If you’re taking a free online training, it's helpful to understand who wrote that lesson plan and why. ChatGPT Foundations for Educators is a cou...

mail.cyberneticforests.com

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Nov 25

Sfu! bsky.app/profile/hkan...
Also York! Canada has really strong terminal MAs.

H.K. Andersen @hkandersen.bsky.social · Nov 25

Just read the new Phil Gourmet Report. It is so bad on MA rankings that it is an actual injustice to applicants. It has completely left SFU out of any rankings. Just the US? Why? Our program is, honestly, better for the MA than *all* the programs ranked there. Spread the word about SFU here instead

H.K. Andersen @hkandersen.bsky.social · Nov 25

Just read the new Phil Gourmet Report. It is so bad on MA rankings that it is an actual injustice to applicants. It has completely left SFU out of any rankings. Just the US? Why? Our program is, honestly, better for the MA than *all* the programs ranked there. Spread the word about SFU here instead

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Oct 21

briefly looking up empirical papers, giving up and resorting to nature documentaries is just ... extremely philosophy.

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · Mar 26

Evolution of Similarity-Biased Social Learning.

New preprint with Alejandro Perez Velilla. A long time in the making. Feedback welcome!

Here’s a short summary thread.
osf.io/preprints/so...

THE EVOLUTION OF SIMILARITY-BIASED SOCIAL LEARNING

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Sep 6

It seems Ludwig Boltzmann had a bit of a drinking problem.

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Jun 24

I think @jbakcoleman.bsky.social is pretty interesting. Bayesian to boot!

Nathaniel Forde @nathanielforde.bsky.social · Jun 13

New Deep Dive on Splines and Hierarchical Splines for modelling Insurance Loss curves with Bambi/PyMC.

The focus is on the contrast between interpolation, extrapolation and how including extra hierarchical structure aids generalisation.

nathanielf.github.io/posts/post-w...

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Apr 14

This is an excellent (very short!) discussion of how to decide which methods to use.

(How can there be so many snappy and highly relevant pieces by Gelman et al. that I haven’t read?!)

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Mar 28

I picked up the dialectical biologist at a used bookstore a couple weeks ago. It slaps. Includes a whole chapter about pranks they played on EO Wilson along with this strategy for riches and professional success.

daniel saunders @danielsaunders.bsky.social · Mar 20

You might checkout what nathanielf.github.io does. He was a modal logic guy who now does causal inference in industry. Or www.pymc-labs.com/team/benjami... , used to be a cognitive science prof. Both of them would be pretty curious about your work I reckon.

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