Ben Schneider
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bschneidr.bsky.social
Ben Schneider
@bschneidr.bsky.social
720 followers 590 following 270 posts
Stats, surveys, R, and dogs.
www.practicalsignificance.com
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bschneidr.bsky.social
Here's a simple R example. Two R packages yield different results from each other, and both R packages will surprisingly return different results depending on the arbitrary way that the data are sorted. So you can easily wind up getting a different estimate on Tuesday than you got on Monday.
R code from the blog post, showing that weighted quantile functions return different results depending on the sort order of the data.
November 5, 2025 at 4:36 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Yeah, exactly. That's the right tool for this.
The following R code: library(dplyr) library(forcats) # Order the `species` levels by frequency penguins2 <- penguins |> mutate( species = fct_infreq(factor(species)) ) # Check levels before reordering penguins$species |> table() # Check levels after reordering penguins2$species |> table()
September 30, 2025 at 2:53 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Done. Thanks for pointing out it was Disney’s decision to cancel Kimmel.
September 18, 2025 at 12:36 AM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Checking in on the stats/econometrics methods literature for causal forests with DiD #econsky #statsky
Meme of the pawn stars broker saying “You want the ATE? Best I can do is ATT.”
September 12, 2025 at 8:06 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Not a meme, just a really thought-provoking data viz:
A chart titled “Horses vs Pelicans: how they compare across the decades (1990-2020).” The horses number is higher, peaking around 6 in 2020, but dips in 2000 and recovers in 2005 onwards. The pelicans number gradually declines after 2000.
July 30, 2025 at 10:26 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Definitely. That was one of the things I found surprising but valuable from Gelman’s book “Red State Blue State, Rich State Poor State”
A theme throughout this book is that the cultural differences between states—the things that make red and blue America feel like different places—boil down to differences among richer people in these states. In many ways, it’s poorer people who are more localized: lower-income people generally travel less, are more likely to have local accents, and are less likely to know people in other parts of the country. But in other ways that are relevant to the red-blue divide, differences are greater among people of higher incomes. Throughout the country, lower-income Americans are shopping at discount stores, eating at McDonald’s, and taking the bus. It’s disposable income that allows you to choose between SUVs and hybrids, NASCAR and the opera, and so forth.
July 22, 2025 at 12:39 AM
bschneidr.bsky.social
I do like Coke Zero better, but I find it funny that it was basically invented to sell drinks to men who avoid Diet Coke because they think that diet soda is effeminate:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Co...
Screenshot of a Wikipedia entry. Text is as follows: Coke Zero was originally specifically marketed to men, who are shown to associate "diet" drinks with women. It was primarily marketed towards young adult males and it has been nicknamed "Bloke Coke" in the UK. In the U.S., advertising has been tailored to its targeted market by describing the drink as "calorie-free" rather than "diet", since young adult males are said to associate diet drinks with women.
July 11, 2025 at 1:16 AM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Looking forward to the seminar after this, where Brian Wansink will present on best practices in data management
Email announcement with the following text: Hello everyone, In 2023, Statistical Horizons launched its Distinguished Speaker Series, a series of 3-hour virtual seminars taught by some of the most prominent and innovative scholars in the field. On Monday, August 11th, Professor John P. A. Ioannidis will present Reproducible and Useful Research: The Replication Crisis and Solutions.
July 7, 2025 at 2:23 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Caught this surreal sight in Atlanta today. Army tanks returning from the multimillion vanity parade in DC, passing behind a man begging for money on a street named after a confederate general.
June 23, 2025 at 2:52 AM
bschneidr.bsky.social
#NoKings in Maryland
June 14, 2025 at 6:09 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Apropos of nothing, here’s one of the flower girls/boys from a wedding last weekend:
A German spitz. Essentially a fluffier, slightly bigger Pomeranian. Wearing a blue flower corsage and raising his paws in a begging or praying gesture.
April 24, 2025 at 12:27 AM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Amused by this tidbit in NPR’s interview with the head of Africa CDC, disappointed he got to visit NPR’s HQ but couldn’t stay for a Tiny Desk Concert.

www.npr.org/sections/goa...
Excerpt from the linked article: He visited NPR in March — and was disappointed that he had to leave before a Tiny Desk concert. In a 30-minute conversation, he talked about his strategy going forward, his non-aid-related concerns — and how it's all impacting his sleep and personal relationships.
March 31, 2025 at 4:53 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
From the Chief Statistician of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): publicly acknowledging that the agency was effectively dissolved yesterday, despite the law mandating its existence and many specific activities.

www.linkedin.com/posts/gail-m...
According to the paperwork, I am the Chief Statistician of the National Center for Education Statistics until my reluctant and very “early retirement” begins on April 1. However, my job effectively ended yesterday with the RIF of all my hard-working, dedicated NCES colleagues, an action that essentially dissolves NCES.
March 12, 2025 at 10:33 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
The ‘svrep’ R 📦 has a logo now- the background is a visualization of a generalized bootstrap variance estimator

bschneidr.github.io/svrep/
A hex logo with the title “svrep” in the center. The background inside the hex logo is a fine grid of squares. They are mostly black but a diagonal strip runs through with a center of orange squares surrounded by blue squares throughout that diagonal strip.
March 10, 2025 at 12:10 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
This morning’s protest at NOAA flooded out onto the highway outside
March 3, 2025 at 4:39 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
This is the most egregious misuse of the phrase “racially charged” I’ve seen yet. This State Department nominee’s statements are as literally racist as it gets.
A screenshot of a CNN article with the following text excerpt. Beattie also has made a series of racially charged comments, writing in one tweet last year, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” He praised Dr. James Watson, the founder of modern genetics who later suggested Black people were less intelligent than White people, as the “greatest living American scientist.” Beattie repeatedly said Black lawmakers, policymakers, and groups need to “learn” their place and take “a knee to MAGA.”
February 4, 2025 at 5:03 AM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Today’s issue of The Survey Statistician includes an overview of two #rstats 📦’s (srvyr & svrep) for survey data analysis, facilitating Tidyverse workflows and flexible resampling methods such as the generalized bootstrap, building on ‘survey’ as a foundation #statsky

isi-iass.org/home/wp-cont...
A screenshot of a newsletter showing the title and abstract from the following article: https://isi-iass.org/home/wp-content/uploads/Survey_Statistician_2025_January_N91_06.pdf#page9
January 28, 2025 at 2:13 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Day 1 of #adventofcode with #rstats and #python.

R: gist.githubusercontent.com/bschneidr/50...

Python: gist.github.com/bschneidr/50...
Four lines of R code, available here: https://gist.github.com/bschneidr/5051ee39ba40966d66550270d8270989 A few lines of Python code, available here: https://gist.github.com/bschneidr/5051ee39ba40966d66550270d8270989
December 2, 2024 at 11:49 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
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A smiling foxhound sits on a couch and looks up at you
November 5, 2024 at 7:29 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
New blog post up showing a few simple options for speeding up computations in #rstats, as well as a brief look at using #rustlang with the help of the {rextendr} package.

www.practicalsignificance.com/posts/some-f...
A table (available in the link) that compares the milliseconds required to run some code in R.
September 24, 2024 at 2:11 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Some #datavis 📉 for an underappreciated story that affects H-1B applicants and those of us who work with them in the U.S. Recent rule changes from the Biden admin squashed a big spike in H-1B lottery fraud.
www.practicalsignificance.com/posts/visual...
September 7, 2024 at 4:01 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
In this instance it was for the PIAAC survey, which is a national household survey of adults 16-65 that measure literacy and other skills. Some Westat colleagues wrote about the variance estimation strategy in this paper: www.asasrms.org/Proceedings/...
September 3, 2024 at 8:16 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
an excellent point about the value of writing and why you don’t want AI tools to do all your writing for you
July 31, 2024 at 3:59 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
This book, “An Immense World” by Ed Yong, is just a real delight.
June 26, 2024 at 1:58 PM
bschneidr.bsky.social
Cherry blossom season is the best
A smiling hound dog with a purple harness sitting in a pile of cherry blossom petals on grass
April 6, 2024 at 5:26 PM