Ray Bai
@raybai07.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of Statistics at George Mason University, French bulldog owner, and pop culture enthusiast. Any views expressed on here are my own, not my employer's. π¨βπ«π ππ¨βπ³π³οΈβπ raybai.net
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February 9, 2026 at 2:40 PM
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This Super Bowl game is fairly boring, but absolutely loved the Halftime Show and the other musical performances! Green Day, Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny β€οΈβ€οΈ
February 9, 2026 at 2:21 AM
This Super Bowl game is fairly boring, but absolutely loved the Halftime Show and the other musical performances! Green Day, Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny β€οΈβ€οΈ
Congrats to my collaborator and former student Qingyang Liu (I taught him in 2 classes, served on his dissertation committee, and have co-authored several papers with him)! He will be joining @wakeforeststats.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor in July. π₯³Great department!
β¨β¨β¨Alumnus spotlight β¨β¨β¨
Our alumnus, Dr. Qingyang Liu (PhD 2023), will join Wake Forest University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Statistics.
Congratulations Qingyang! We are so proud of you. πππ
Our alumnus, Dr. Qingyang Liu (PhD 2023), will join Wake Forest University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Statistics.
Congratulations Qingyang! We are so proud of you. πππ
February 3, 2026 at 11:44 PM
Congrats to my collaborator and former student Qingyang Liu (I taught him in 2 classes, served on his dissertation committee, and have co-authored several papers with him)! He will be joining @wakeforeststats.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor in July. π₯³Great department!
To anyone who is on the job market in Statistics this academic year: the George Mason University (GMU) Department of Statistics is hiring for open-rank, tenure-track or tenured positions!
For full consideration, apply by January 14 at this link: tinyurl.com/6mjs8fye
For full consideration, apply by January 14 at this link: tinyurl.com/6mjs8fye
Open-Rank, Tenured/Tenure-Track Statistics Faculty - Fairfax, VA, Virginia, United States
Department: Col of Engineering and Computing
Classification: 9-month Instructional Faculty
Job Category:Β Instructional Faculty
Job Type:Β Full-Time
Work Schedule:Β Full-time (1.0 FTE, 40 hrs/wk)
Locatio...
tinyurl.com
January 8, 2026 at 3:14 AM
To anyone who is on the job market in Statistics this academic year: the George Mason University (GMU) Department of Statistics is hiring for open-rank, tenure-track or tenured positions!
For full consideration, apply by January 14 at this link: tinyurl.com/6mjs8fye
For full consideration, apply by January 14 at this link: tinyurl.com/6mjs8fye
Our paper "Quantifying predictive uncertainty of aphasia severity in stroke patients with sparse heteroscedastic Bayesian high-dimensional regression" was published in the most recent issue of Computational Statistics. Read the paper here: doi.org/10.1007/s001...
January 2, 2026 at 1:58 PM
Our paper "Quantifying predictive uncertainty of aphasia severity in stroke patients with sparse heteroscedastic Bayesian high-dimensional regression" was published in the most recent issue of Computational Statistics. Read the paper here: doi.org/10.1007/s001...
Reposted by Ray Bai
Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...
December 9, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...
Grading my final exams for undergrad probability & statistics, and this response to one of my questions seriously made me laugh out loud for minutes. Should I give Extra Credit for the student's response? "Bob, you are a fool amongst fools." πππ
December 12, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Grading my final exams for undergrad probability & statistics, and this response to one of my questions seriously made me laugh out loud for minutes. Should I give Extra Credit for the student's response? "Bob, you are a fool amongst fools." πππ
Our R package for VCBART, or fitting BART-based varying coefficient models, is now available on CRAN! Useful for flexible regression modeling + can be used to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects in causal inference by specifying X and Z appropriately. Check it cran.r-project.org/web/packages...
cran.r-project.org
December 10, 2025 at 4:55 AM
Our R package for VCBART, or fitting BART-based varying coefficient models, is now available on CRAN! Useful for flexible regression modeling + can be used to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects in causal inference by specifying X and Z appropriately. Check it cran.r-project.org/web/packages...
Yes. "... the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI eraβcreative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysisβare precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process."
Colleges Are Preparing to Self-Lobotomize
The skills that students will need in an age of automation are precisely those that are eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.
www.theatlantic.com
December 8, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Yes. "... the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI eraβcreative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysisβare precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process."
A sad day for the statistics community. U. of Nebraska Board of Regents voted to eliminate UNL's Department of Statistics.
Yesterday was a very sad day for all of Statistics: The University of Nebraska Board of Regents voted 9-1 (with 2 abstentions) to eliminate its Department of Statistics (https://lnkd.in/gJzJ_yki)β¦ | C...
Yesterday was a very sad day for all of Statistics: The University of Nebraska Board of Regents voted 9-1 (with 2 abstentions) to eliminate its Department of Statistics (https://lnkd.in/gJzJ_yki). The...
www.linkedin.com
December 6, 2025 at 4:23 PM
A sad day for the statistics community. U. of Nebraska Board of Regents voted to eliminate UNL's Department of Statistics.
I'm at the Brin Mathematics Research Center today for the Maryland Statistics Symposium! Presenting my work on generative quantile regression w/ former PhD student Dr. Shijie Wang (U. South Carolina '24) and Dr. Minsuk Shin of Yonsei U. (published in JCGS last year).
December 5, 2025 at 2:20 PM
I'm at the Brin Mathematics Research Center today for the Maryland Statistics Symposium! Presenting my work on generative quantile regression w/ former PhD student Dr. Shijie Wang (U. South Carolina '24) and Dr. Minsuk Shin of Yonsei U. (published in JCGS last year).
The Maryland Statistical Symposium looks awesome! brinmrc.umd.edu/fall25-mss/
So honored to be invited to speak at this event alongside many outstanding researchers, some of whose work I have followed and admired for years!
So honored to be invited to speak at this event alongside many outstanding researchers, some of whose work I have followed and admired for years!
Maryland Statistical Symposium | Brin Mathematics Research Center
brinmrc.umd.edu
November 24, 2025 at 5:12 PM
The Maryland Statistical Symposium looks awesome! brinmrc.umd.edu/fall25-mss/
So honored to be invited to speak at this event alongside many outstanding researchers, some of whose work I have followed and admired for years!
So honored to be invited to speak at this event alongside many outstanding researchers, some of whose work I have followed and admired for years!
Reposted by Ray Bai
If you're following the #UNL #statistics saga (proposed for elimination based on bad stats), you might find the seminar we gave yesterday interesting... youtu.be/fUk2R0UYWpA
It was weird to rail against someone for an hour, but strangely cathartic, and the #datavis seems to have been effective?
It was weird to rail against someone for an hour, but strangely cathartic, and the #datavis seems to have been effective?
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Statistics seminar "The Metrics" on November 6, 2025
YouTube video by Chris Bilder
youtu.be
November 7, 2025 at 2:33 PM
If you're following the #UNL #statistics saga (proposed for elimination based on bad stats), you might find the seminar we gave yesterday interesting... youtu.be/fUk2R0UYWpA
It was weird to rail against someone for an hour, but strangely cathartic, and the #datavis seems to have been effective?
It was weird to rail against someone for an hour, but strangely cathartic, and the #datavis seems to have been effective?
Congrats to my student Leah Wood for successfully defending her Senior honors thesis "Spatiotemporal Modeling of Maternal Mortality in South Carolina 2018-2023"! Leah will pursue a Masters in Biostatistics next.
This was on par with an excellent Masters thesis, tbh. Great job!
This was on par with an excellent Masters thesis, tbh. Great job!
November 5, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Congrats to my student Leah Wood for successfully defending her Senior honors thesis "Spatiotemporal Modeling of Maternal Mortality in South Carolina 2018-2023"! Leah will pursue a Masters in Biostatistics next.
This was on par with an excellent Masters thesis, tbh. Great job!
This was on par with an excellent Masters thesis, tbh. Great job!
Having a great time visiting Columbia, SC and catching up with old friends and coworkers! I will always be grateful to @uofscstatistics.bsky.social for helping me to launch my career!
November 5, 2025 at 2:54 AM
Having a great time visiting Columbia, SC and catching up with old friends and coworkers! I will always be grateful to @uofscstatistics.bsky.social for helping me to launch my career!
nailed it!
Jonathan Bailey photographed by Jason Hetherington for People Magazineβs 2025 Sexiest Man Alive Issue
November 4, 2025 at 6:36 AM
nailed it!
One week till my trip to Columbia, SC to see my Honors student Leah defend her senior thesis! She did an excellent job on Bayesian spatiotemporal modeling of maternal mortality in South Carolina from 2018-2023. She coded up the model in Stan & R and produced some very nice maps!
October 29, 2025 at 12:40 AM
One week till my trip to Columbia, SC to see my Honors student Leah defend her senior thesis! She did an excellent job on Bayesian spatiotemporal modeling of maternal mortality in South Carolina from 2018-2023. She coded up the model in Stan & R and produced some very nice maps!
Excited to give a talk at the Maryland Statistical Symposium at the Brin Mathematics Research Center this December! Looking forward to connecting with many outstanding statistics researchers in the DMV area and the mid-Atlantic region.
October 21, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Excited to give a talk at the Maryland Statistical Symposium at the Brin Mathematics Research Center this December! Looking forward to connecting with many outstanding statistics researchers in the DMV area and the mid-Atlantic region.
My AISM paper "Bayesian group regularization in generalized linear models with a continuous spike-and-slab prior" is now online! I really appreciated the feedback from reviewers who wrote very thorough, high-quality reviews. A+ experience submitting here. tinyurl.com/yc6phfwv
Bayesian group regularization in generalized linear models with a continuous spike-and-slab prior - Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics
We study Bayesian group-regularized estimation in high-dimensional generalized linear models (GLMs) under a continuous spike-and-slab prior. Our framework covers both canonical and non-canonical link ...
tinyurl.com
October 18, 2025 at 10:13 PM
My AISM paper "Bayesian group regularization in generalized linear models with a continuous spike-and-slab prior" is now online! I really appreciated the feedback from reviewers who wrote very thorough, high-quality reviews. A+ experience submitting here. tinyurl.com/yc6phfwv
Today is my 40th birthday, and I had a very special treat for it -- getting to meet one of my idols, Dr. Jianqin Fan! Dr. Fan's papers on SCAD penalty and sure independence screening for high-dimensional data were among the first papers I read as a PhD student. So inspiring!
September 26, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Today is my 40th birthday, and I had a very special treat for it -- getting to meet one of my idols, Dr. Jianqin Fan! Dr. Fan's papers on SCAD penalty and sure independence screening for high-dimensional data were among the first papers I read as a PhD student. So inspiring!
Turning 40 in a week (!). Here are some old photos of me when I was 30-31 yrs old and much more fit/30 pounds lighter. Need to get back into shape, maybe join a local running group again!
September 19, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Turning 40 in a week (!). Here are some old photos of me when I was 30-31 yrs old and much more fit/30 pounds lighter. Need to get back into shape, maybe join a local running group again!
I'm pleased to share that my single-authored paper "Bayesian group regularization in generalized linear models with a continuous spike-and-slab prior" has been accepted for publication in Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics!
Link: raybai.net/wp-content/u...
Link: raybai.net/wp-content/u...
September 16, 2025 at 12:11 PM
I'm pleased to share that my single-authored paper "Bayesian group regularization in generalized linear models with a continuous spike-and-slab prior" has been accepted for publication in Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics!
Link: raybai.net/wp-content/u...
Link: raybai.net/wp-content/u...
Our paper, "Quantifying predictive uncertainty of aphasia severity in stroke patients with sparse heteroscedastic Bayesian high-dimensional regression," has been accepted for publication in Computational Statistics!
Read it here: raybai.net/wp-content/u...
Read it here: raybai.net/wp-content/u...
September 15, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Our paper, "Quantifying predictive uncertainty of aphasia severity in stroke patients with sparse heteroscedastic Bayesian high-dimensional regression," has been accepted for publication in Computational Statistics!
Read it here: raybai.net/wp-content/u...
Read it here: raybai.net/wp-content/u...
Going to be back at University of South Carolina November 4-5 for my Honors thesis student Leah's defense! Excited to see her exceptional work on Bayesian modeling of maternal mortality with suppressed data (a challenging project that she tackled very well). Hope to catch up with folks!
September 9, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Going to be back at University of South Carolina November 4-5 for my Honors thesis student Leah's defense! Excited to see her exceptional work on Bayesian modeling of maternal mortality with suppressed data (a challenging project that she tackled very well). Hope to catch up with folks!