Peter Ellis
@freerangestats.info
Director, Statistics for Development Division, at the Pacific Community. Posts are personal views, and most likely to be about data and #rstats, maybe with bits of history, social science and philosophy thrown in. Blog is at https://freerangestats.info/.
Pinned
First in a series of #rstats blog posts about drawing charts of population growth, migration and remittance issues for Pacific island countries and territories. Today's starts with the simplest - a couple of different ways to summarise population size and growth. freerangestats.info/blog/2025/11...
Reposted by Peter Ellis
For last week's #TidyTuesday, I created a map of endangered languages around the world. Built entirely in R/ggplot2: transforming spatial coordinates, identifying hotspots and composing multiple charts!
Code: github.com/gkaramanis/t...
Inspiration: www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/co...
#RStats #dataviz
Code: github.com/gkaramanis/t...
Inspiration: www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/co...
#RStats #dataviz
December 29, 2025 at 11:47 AM
For last week's #TidyTuesday, I created a map of endangered languages around the world. Built entirely in R/ggplot2: transforming spatial coordinates, identifying hotspots and composing multiple charts!
Code: github.com/gkaramanis/t...
Inspiration: www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/co...
#RStats #dataviz
Code: github.com/gkaramanis/t...
Inspiration: www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/co...
#RStats #dataviz
I see the guy who said sinking the Bismarck was a war crime has deleted his account or something. This was a classic kerfuffle that should have just been about facts (did the Bismarck surrender before sinking or not? And the answer is "no") but instead became an abusive bunfight in all directions.
December 29, 2025 at 4:22 AM
I see the guy who said sinking the Bismarck was a war crime has deleted his account or something. This was a classic kerfuffle that should have just been about facts (did the Bismarck surrender before sinking or not? And the answer is "no") but instead became an abusive bunfight in all directions.
I have put together an index page compiling my various #rstats blog posts using #Pacific island countries and territories; data: freerangestats.info/blog/pacific.... Topics such as choropleth maps of the Pacific, demographic techniques and trends, and multidimensional vulnerability.
Posts about the Pacific
I write about applications of data and analytical techniques like statistical modelling and simulation to real-world situations. I show how to access and use data, and provide examples of analytical p...
freerangestats.info
December 29, 2025 at 2:44 AM
I have put together an index page compiling my various #rstats blog posts using #Pacific island countries and territories; data: freerangestats.info/blog/pacific.... Topics such as choropleth maps of the Pacific, demographic techniques and trends, and multidimensional vulnerability.
Reposted by Peter Ellis
The death of Brigitte Bardot necessitated the update of this marvelous chart. Only three people mentioned in Billy Joel's banger "We Didn't Start The Fire" are still alive. Source: buff.ly/cWkphRB
December 28, 2025 at 10:49 PM
The death of Brigitte Bardot necessitated the update of this marvelous chart. Only three people mentioned in Billy Joel's banger "We Didn't Start The Fire" are still alive. Source: buff.ly/cWkphRB
Reposted by Peter Ellis
That is pretty obvious to me. If a paper has hallucinations, fake citations or other LLM artifacts, it should be immediately desk rejected.
I'd like to propose the following norm for peer review of papers. If a paper shows clear signs of LLM-generated errors that were not detected by the author, the paper should be immediately rejected. My reasoning: 1/ #ResearchIntegrity
December 28, 2025 at 10:04 AM
That is pretty obvious to me. If a paper has hallucinations, fake citations or other LLM artifacts, it should be immediately desk rejected.
Reposted by Peter Ellis
I generally think @maiamindel.bsky.social is a very good commentator and her take on the Are White Male Millennials Oppressed? discourse is good too.
someunpleasant.substack.com/p/whose-lost...
someunpleasant.substack.com/p/whose-lost...
Whose Lost Decade?
Woke Saturn devouring his chud son
someunpleasant.substack.com
December 27, 2025 at 9:28 AM
I generally think @maiamindel.bsky.social is a very good commentator and her take on the Are White Male Millennials Oppressed? discourse is good too.
someunpleasant.substack.com/p/whose-lost...
someunpleasant.substack.com/p/whose-lost...
OK books that I read for the first time in 2025 and gave five stars to! - a thread. First up, Marc Morris' The Norman Conquest. I don't remember much about this but I read it in a day this Jan and gave it 5 stars so it must be good. I remember learning more about the post-Hastings stuff.
The Norman Conquest
An epic tale, with violence at its heart, and a triumph…
www.goodreads.com
December 27, 2025 at 4:15 AM
OK books that I read for the first time in 2025 and gave five stars to! - a thread. First up, Marc Morris' The Norman Conquest. I don't remember much about this but I read it in a day this Jan and gave it 5 stars so it must be good. I remember learning more about the post-Hastings stuff.
Reposted by Peter Ellis
AI is accelerating the velocity of stupid promises by 5x
December 25, 2025 at 4:12 AM
AI is accelerating the velocity of stupid promises by 5x
The #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go.
December 20, 2025 at 2:45 AM
The #1 movie when you were 10 years old is how your 2026 is going to go.
Reposted by Peter Ellis
A really nice—and surprising—chart from Amanda Shendruk's excellent newsletter, Not-Ship
www.not-ship.com/when-do-most...
www.not-ship.com/when-do-most...
December 17, 2025 at 8:53 PM
A really nice—and surprising—chart from Amanda Shendruk's excellent newsletter, Not-Ship
www.not-ship.com/when-do-most...
www.not-ship.com/when-do-most...
Reposted by Peter Ellis
Here’s an article from this year with the Australian gun lobby boasting that, with surging gun numbers, it was winning the fight against firearms control advocates. Blame guns. Blame anti-Semitism. Blame terrorists. Do not blame everyday Australians who marched for peace.
Australia’s gun lobby says it’s ‘winning’ the fight against firearm control as numbers surge
There are now more than 4m guns in the community – almost double the number recorded in the years after the Port Arthur massacre that prompted a national crackdown
www.theguardian.com
December 14, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Here’s an article from this year with the Australian gun lobby boasting that, with surging gun numbers, it was winning the fight against firearms control advocates. Blame guns. Blame anti-Semitism. Blame terrorists. Do not blame everyday Australians who marched for peace.
Reposted by Peter Ellis
Keeping this at hand in case I need to point to it and tap
December 12, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Keeping this at hand in case I need to point to it and tap
Reposted by Peter Ellis
⬛🟦⚪ Two years in the making! In a fantastic collaboration with Miguel from the International Labour Organisation! 🖤💙 The 'bpvars' package for Forecasting with Bayesian Panel Vector Autoregressions is out on CRAN! And it's spectacular!
cran.r-project.org/package=bpvars
#bpvars #bsvars.org #rstats
cran.r-project.org/package=bpvars
#bpvars #bsvars.org #rstats
December 11, 2025 at 11:23 PM
⬛🟦⚪ Two years in the making! In a fantastic collaboration with Miguel from the International Labour Organisation! 🖤💙 The 'bpvars' package for Forecasting with Bayesian Panel Vector Autoregressions is out on CRAN! And it's spectacular!
cran.r-project.org/package=bpvars
#bpvars #bsvars.org #rstats
cran.r-project.org/package=bpvars
#bpvars #bsvars.org #rstats
'Most stuff .... is in response to other stuff' is a common problem whenever looking for in depth reading on a topic. So frustrating to have to wade through multiple chapters on why Wiggins is all wrong. Different if you knew the chap, of course.
A few months ago I started on a set of wargame rules, originally written in great haste based on your articles on ancient warfare. As I've moved to broader academic reading on the topic to build out the sourcing and game model it's been a real pain as most stuff I read is in response to other stuff.
December 12, 2025 at 2:08 AM
'Most stuff .... is in response to other stuff' is a common problem whenever looking for in depth reading on a topic. So frustrating to have to wade through multiple chapters on why Wiggins is all wrong. Different if you knew the chap, of course.
Legal question, can a seizure warrant signed by a US judge legitimise a seizure on the high seas (outside US jurisdiction), or is this piracy? edition.cnn.com/2025/12/10/p...
US seized oil tanker off Venezuelan coast, Trump says | CNN Politics
President Donald Trump on Wednesday confirmed that the US had taken control of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a move which risks inflaming tensions with that country.
edition.cnn.com
December 11, 2025 at 12:32 AM
Legal question, can a seizure warrant signed by a US judge legitimise a seizure on the high seas (outside US jurisdiction), or is this piracy? edition.cnn.com/2025/12/10/p...
Brilliant use of a Sankey chart, for any sceptics doubting that they have their purposes.
Absolutely amazing chart from @peterkellner.bsky.social's piece in @thenewworldmag.bsky.social today:
www.thenewworld.co.uk/peter-kellne...
www.thenewworld.co.uk/peter-kellne...
December 10, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Brilliant use of a Sankey chart, for any sceptics doubting that they have their purposes.
One thing I learned today is that the US State Department was using New Courier font until 2003, presumably to emulate the look of everything being typed out on mechanical typewriters. Apparently not just for the secure cable system but douments in general?
December 10, 2025 at 4:27 AM
One thing I learned today is that the US State Department was using New Courier font until 2003, presumably to emulate the look of everything being typed out on mechanical typewriters. Apparently not just for the secure cable system but douments in general?
Reposted by Peter Ellis
A nice piece on algorithmic pricing worth your time.
A question I got frequently when I led BLS was why the agency went into stores and didn’t just collect prices online. My answer, “prices online are often different than in the store, so we do both” often surprised people.
A question I got frequently when I led BLS was why the agency went into stores and didn’t just collect prices online. My answer, “prices online are often different than in the store, so we do both” often surprised people.
Same product. Same store. Same time. But on Instacart, different customers may see different prices.
My story on a fascinating new experiment from @groundwork.bsky.social & @consumerreports.org and how the idea of a single price is breaking down in the digital age:
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/b...
My story on a fascinating new experiment from @groundwork.bsky.social & @consumerreports.org and how the idea of a single price is breaking down in the digital age:
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/b...
Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ
www.nytimes.com
December 9, 2025 at 5:01 PM
A nice piece on algorithmic pricing worth your time.
A question I got frequently when I led BLS was why the agency went into stores and didn’t just collect prices online. My answer, “prices online are often different than in the store, so we do both” often surprised people.
A question I got frequently when I led BLS was why the agency went into stores and didn’t just collect prices online. My answer, “prices online are often different than in the store, so we do both” often surprised people.
The world needs more indicators of country-level governance that are not perceptions-based and that can change faster and more responsively than existing measures.
New MCC scorecards exclude 2/3s of poorest eligible countries, compared to <40% of the richest ones. The MCC board just scrapped a whole load of existing compacts in poorer countries. These are the very countries MCC was originally designed to help.
www.cgdev.org/blog/millenn...
www.cgdev.org/blog/millenn...
The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s New Country Scorecards Discriminate Against Development Impact
The US Millennium Challenge Corporation's scorecard system has long included flawed measures around governance and corruption, but reforms this year have made the impact of these indicators even worse...
www.cgdev.org
December 9, 2025 at 8:07 PM
The world needs more indicators of country-level governance that are not perceptions-based and that can change faster and more responsively than existing measures.
I quite like this model combining open publication, postpub review, and journals downstream pick and choose. What are the arguments against it?
I'm increasingly a fan of the model of making everything a preprint with open, non-anonymised commentary. If a journal likes it, they invite the authors to undergo review from paid reviewers. Journals then become curators who can pick and choose, where editors are forced into due diligence.
December 7, 2025 at 8:41 AM
I quite like this model combining open publication, postpub review, and journals downstream pick and choose. What are the arguments against it?
Reposted by Peter Ellis
People post more code and preregister more, and have very positive attitudes about it www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Increase in sample sizes: Bakker, M., Lê, T. T., & Marzalek, J. M. (2025). osf.io/preprints/ps...
Increase in sample sizes: Bakker, M., Lê, T. T., & Marzalek, J. M. (2025). osf.io/preprints/ps...
Survey of open science practices and attitudes in the social sciences - Nature Communications
Open science practices are becoming more common in the social sciences, but there is limited data on their popularity and prevalence. Here, using survey data, the authors provide evidence that levels ...
www.nature.com
December 4, 2025 at 8:57 PM
People post more code and preregister more, and have very positive attitudes about it www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Increase in sample sizes: Bakker, M., Lê, T. T., & Marzalek, J. M. (2025). osf.io/preprints/ps...
Increase in sample sizes: Bakker, M., Lê, T. T., & Marzalek, J. M. (2025). osf.io/preprints/ps...
My most cheesy view is probably that I find Kipling's *If* motivating and inspiring. (Fully conceding that the last line hasn't aged well and needs interpretation to work.) Comparative British and Roman imperial stoicism is presumably a topic discussed in depth somewhere.
December 4, 2025 at 8:53 PM
My most cheesy view is probably that I find Kipling's *If* motivating and inspiring. (Fully conceding that the last line hasn't aged well and needs interpretation to work.) Comparative British and Roman imperial stoicism is presumably a topic discussed in depth somewhere.
Reposted by Peter Ellis
Second #rstats blog post in a series on Pacific island population issues. This post looks at net migration estimates from the UN Population Prospects. For most Pacific countries, net migration is strongly negative most of the time. freerangestats.info/blog/2025/12...
December 4, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Second #rstats blog post in a series on Pacific island population issues. This post looks at net migration estimates from the UN Population Prospects. For most Pacific countries, net migration is strongly negative most of the time. freerangestats.info/blog/2025/12...
Second #rstats blog post in a series on Pacific island population issues. This post looks at net migration estimates from the UN Population Prospects. For most Pacific countries, net migration is strongly negative most of the time. freerangestats.info/blog/2025/12...
December 4, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Second #rstats blog post in a series on Pacific island population issues. This post looks at net migration estimates from the UN Population Prospects. For most Pacific countries, net migration is strongly negative most of the time. freerangestats.info/blog/2025/12...
