Florent Bédécarrats
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fbedecarrats.bsky.social
Florent Bédécarrats
@fbedecarrats.bsky.social
280 followers 640 following 84 posts
Applied economist @IRD, I work mostly on policy evaluation, development & environment issues. Opinions are my own.
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Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
andrew.heiss.phd
Wrote up a little intervention post/explanation for my class about why using LLMs for trying to learn programming (as first time learners!) is bad and detrimental datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-11...
In the first week of class, I had you read an article about how ChatGPT is philosophical “bullshit”, as well as this other post about AI and LLMs in this class. I’ve seen a surprising increase in the amount of ChatGPT-based weekly check-ins and graph interpretations in the exercises. (In the past, I’ve even had students tell me they PDFs of the slides into ChatGPT to generate interesting and confusing things.) Don’t do this! LLMs cannot find three things that you personally found interesting from the readings. LLMs are not you. It’s a huge waste of time for all of us to for me to spend time evaluating and grading output from ChatGPT. I want to read what you think and do, not what a computer invents. NoteMy personal stance on AI and LLMs Many of you have asked about how I think about and use LLMs in my own work (and in the class materials). Please check this short little page where I explain what I do with text, images, code, research, and learning. In short, I do not use LLMs to create any of the materials for this class, and I do not use them to grade or evaluate any of your work. I’ve even had several students submit completely made up stuff for mini projects and final projects. In your final project, your job is to take a dataset, make three different plots with it, and combine the plots into one graphic that tells some sort of story. I’ve (really truly) received projects like this: (a ChatGPT-generated plot of completely made up data from gapminder) At a very quick glance, that looks like a plausible image. But holy crap it falls apart fast, both comically and tragically. Comically because, like, look at the y-axis in the scatterplot; or the x-axis ticks in the population grown chart that are sometimes spaced every 20 years, sometimes every 10 years, and has 1980 there twice; or the weird blobs in the map. Tragically—and most importantly—literally nothing in this image is real and none of the annotations make sense and none of the colors make sense and everything here is completely meaningless and devoid of any information. It’s pure philosophical bullshit—an image “produced without concern for its truth.” That’s what I mean when I say that it’s a forgetful and unreliable resource. Lots of that code is helpful as an illustration of what’s going on. Lots of the explanation is good and fine. But it subtly changed its mind halfway through and didn’t realize it (because it can’t realize it! it’s just a chain of statistically likely text!) Hopefully you can see where this is dangerous for learning. It can often “teach” you wrong, and you can only recognize that if you know stuff already. It’s extra dangerous if you then take that example output, paste it into your exercise, and submit it. I’m not even concerned about the plagiarism aspect of that—code is code and there are only a few ways to write {dplyr} code that will do this, and it’s easy to adapt from real human-based examples online, so I’m less worried about stealing other people’s work here. I’m concerned that it’s not real data. It made up values of 1, 2, 3, and 4 for some countries to illustrate grouping and summarizing. That’s good and normal. None of that is real. Don’t treat it as real.
November 2, 2025 at 10:17 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
emilhvitfeldt.bsky.social
I'm exited to announce a new resource about making slides with quarto and revealjs. This book is the combination of all the work I have done in this area, reordered and polished up

There isn't a lot of new information yet, but this format allows me to add more easily

slidecrafting-book.com
#quarto
Screenshot of first page of slidecrafting-book.com website
September 24, 2025 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
masalmon.eu
"How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner" by Annie Mueller 😅 😂 😭

anniemueller.com/posts/how-i-...
How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner - annie's blog
“Hello! I am a developer. Here is my relevant experience: I code in Hoobijag and sometimes jabbernocks and of course ABCDE++++ (but never ABCDE+/^+ are you kidding? ha!)  and I like working with ...
anniemueller.com
September 23, 2025 at 7:57 AM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
moritzstefaner.bsky.social
Just in case you were wondering why capital letters are also called "UPPERcase" :)
"A Pair of Printer’s Cases", drawn by Rudolph Ruzicka. showing a typesetting case with capital laters in the upper case — literally
September 22, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
emilhvitfeldt.bsky.social
Happy to announce ✨quarto-revealjs-editable✨

This fully supersedes the imagemover extension, as I back then didn't realize the potential. You can now also move, resize, change font size and alignment for text in your slides

github.com/EmilHvitfeld...
#quarto #slidecrafting
August 20, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
phildelacote.bsky.social
🗞️ La détermination des chercheurs et chercheuses face à l'inaction (et aux reculs) écologique(s)

Merci @afeitz.bsky.social d'avoir recueilli nos propos pour @lesechosfr.bsky.social.
afeitz.bsky.social Anne Feitz @afeitz.bsky.social · Sep 3
Colère, frustration, rébellion... Comment les scientifiques du climat se sentent-ils en cette fin d'été ? Je leur ai posé la question. Avec (entre autres)
@valmasdel.bsky.social @cassouman40.bsky.social @magalireghezza.bsky.social @phildelacote.bsky.social @wolfgangcramer.net
urls.fr/SfrmZr
September 3, 2025 at 8:23 AM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
chadbourn.bsky.social
BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.
August 10, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
user-conf.bsky.social
You can watch Hadley's keynote at this link: www.youtube.com/live/ctc2kx3...

#useR2025
August 8, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
undercoverhist.bsky.social
Is there any game-theoretic framework showing some short or long-term benefit to EU in the Von der Leyen-Trump deal?
July 28, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
keithfitzgerald.bsky.social
Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.
June 26, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
alariko.bsky.social
June 5, 2025 at 11:06 AM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
johnholbein1.bsky.social
June 1, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
aronlund.bsky.social
“The starvation of Gaza can be measured in the jutting ribs of a 6-year-old girl.”

📝 Vivian Yee
📷 Saher Alghorra
@nytimes.com

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/w...
In Emaciated Children, Gaza’s Hunger Is Laid Bare
www.nytimes.com
June 1, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
paultlevin.bsky.social
“Extreme-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has warned that with this new plan, “within a few months ... Gaza will be totally destroyed”.”

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/m...
Children so malnourished they’re losing their sight: Inside Israel’s Gaza blockade
The blockade has led to famine-like conditions for the two million people living on the Strip, and at least 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the start of the...
www.independent.co.uk
May 11, 2025 at 11:40 AM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
financialtimes.com
Opinion from the FT's Editorial Board: 'The US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.' www.ft.com/content/f5fd...
May 7, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
erikangner.com
"Never again" means not this, ever: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
Gaza will be entirely destroyed, Israeli minister says
Bezalel Smotrich says Palestinians will ‘leave in great numbers to third countries’, raising fears of ethnic cleansing
www.theguardian.com
May 7, 2025 at 6:53 AM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
michaelbarenboim.bsky.social
"The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has depleted all its food stocks for families in Gaza.
Today, WFP delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meals kitchens in the Gaza Strip. These kitchens are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days."

www.wfp.org/news/wfp-run...
WFP runs out of food stocks in Gaza as border crossings remain closed | World Food Programme
GAZA, Palestine – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has depleted all its food stocks for families in Gaza.
www.wfp.org
April 25, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
jdportes.bsky.social
"The soldiers reloaded their magazines and kept shooting even after it was clear that no return fire was coming from the other side – and despite the cries of the aid workers who tried to identify themselves."

From Haaretz.

archive.ph/4vam4
April 23, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
claudistics.bsky.social
do you know who & what could definitely help end diseases?

THE NIH

THE CDC

NSF

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHERS

UNIVERSITIES SUPPORTING THAT RESEARCH

chatGPT can’t ID how many r’s are in “strawberry” but we’re supposed to believe AI will save us instead of the orgs & ppl that got defunded?

fuck off
April 22, 2025 at 6:09 AM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
noahgreifer.bsky.social
livefreeordichotomize.com by @lucystats.bsky.social

matthewbjane.github.io/blog.html by @matthewbjane.bsky.social

www.andrewheiss.com/blog/ by the king @andrew.heiss.phd

ngreifer.github.io/blog/ by yours truly (can't resist a self-promotion 😉)

Stats blogs are the best!
Posts | Noah Greifer
Statistical Consultant and Programmer
ngreifer.github.io
April 22, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
sifill.bsky.social
The plan to prove that the most incompetent White men are preferable to the most highly qualified Black men has been a smashing success.

Between the tariff lunacy tanking the economy, the chain-sawing of the federal govt, & Signal-gate (parts 1 & 2), the supremacy is not looking very supreme.
April 21, 2025 at 1:21 AM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
eddelbuettel.com
The "Getting Started in R - Tinyverse Edition" eight-page pdf guide now has a 2nd edition using, appropriately, `tinyplot` as the plotting package.

See github.com/eddelbuettel... for more.

#rstats
Screenshot of the top parts of pages 5 and 6 of 'Getting Started in R - Tinyverse Edition' at https://github.com/eddelbuettel/gsir-te/
April 20, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
timharford.ft.com
At last, someone who understands how tariffs are going to make America great again!
xkcd.com/3073/
Tariffs
xkcd.com
April 8, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
eollion.bsky.social
Je ne sais pas si elle est étrange, mais cette victoire-ci est inattendue.

Merci aux jurys du prix du Livre politique, aux étudiant.es, et à @assembleenationale.bsky.social.
Prix étudiant du livre politique - Une étrange victoire
April 5, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Florent Bédécarrats
maryamaldossari.bsky.social
An Israeli bombing of a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City killed at least 27, as hundreds of thousands flee Rafah in one of the war’s largest displacements amid Israel’s new push to “divide up” Gaza. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
At least 27 killed in Israeli bombing of shelter in Gaza City, rescuers say
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee from southern city of Rafah in one of war’s biggest mass displacements
www.theguardian.com
April 4, 2025 at 6:02 AM