Sam Clark
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samclark.net
Sam Clark
@samclark.net
1.9K followers 1.3K following 10 posts
Demographer, epidemiologist, and data scientist who develops new methods and does research in demography and epidemiology - samclark.net. Mountain bike rider.
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samclark.net
RIP DHS. We expected this, but it’s still a shock.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/h...
Trump Administration Ends Global Health Research Program
The Demographic and Health Surveys were the only sources of reliable information in many countries on metrics such as mortality, nutrition and education.
www.nytimes.com
February 27, 2025 at 12:51 AM
samclark.net
Annual budget of USAID is about $50B. Annual budget of USA is about $7T. Eliminating USAID does not save anything in this context.
February 7, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
adam-lg.bsky.social
"Treatment Effect Estimation with Observational Network Data using Machine Learning"

Arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2206.14591
#rstats code: github.com/corinne-rahe...

#stats
Causal inference methods for treatment effect estimation usually assume independent units. However, this assumption is often questionable because units may interact, resulting in spillover effects between them. We develop augmented inverse probability weighting (AIPW) for estimation and inference of the expected average treatment effect (EATE) with observational data from a single (social) network with spillover effects. In contrast to overall effects such as the global average treatment effect (GATE), the EATE measures, in expectation and on average over all units, how the outcome of a unit is causally affected by its own treatment, marginalizing over the spillover effects from other units. We develop cross-fitting theory with plugin machine learning to obtain a semiparametric treatment effect estimator that converges at the parametric rate and asymptotically follows a Gaussian distribution. The asymptotics are developed using the dependency graph rather than the network graph, which makes explicit that we allow for spillover effects beyond immediate neighbors in the network. We apply our AIPW method to the Swiss StudentLife Study data to investigate the effect of hours spent studying on exam performance accounting for the students' social network.
January 20, 2025 at 3:02 AM
Reposted by Sam Clark
thekentacorn.bsky.social
Welcome to our Crib
A red squirrel poses for a photo
December 7, 2024 at 8:04 AM
Reposted by Sam Clark
cschmert.bsky.social
Huge congratulations to my Florida State Univ Population Center colleagues Mike McFarland and Matt Hauer (@drdemography.bsky.social) on this important and very newsworthy (!!) paper on the impact of leaded gasoline on US public health. #demography

acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
December 5, 2024 at 11:30 PM
samclark.net
www.statnews.com/2023/03/13/m...
December 6, 2024 at 6:38 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
astrokatie.com
After I moved to Canada a couple of years ago I realized that I was no longer constantly running a massive stress routine in the background of my mind worrying about health care and guns. It was weirdly noticeable only when it stopped.
December 6, 2024 at 12:59 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
berkeleypopcenter.bsky.social
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social is accepting applications for Fall 2025 for the PhD program in Demography AND the Graduate Group in Sociology & Demography. Seeking a diverse and strong cohort; applications DUE 12/17/2024.

Learn more about the program:
www.demog.berkeley.edu/graduate-pro...
Graduate Program - Department of Demography
Graduate Program UC Berkeley Demography offers three graduate degree tracks independently and in conjunction with the department of Sociology. Ph.D. in Demography The doctoral program is intended to p...
www.demog.berkeley.edu
December 4, 2024 at 8:46 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
cschmert.bsky.social
Falling #fertility across the world will lead to significant changes in countries' age pyramids. By 2100, when today's newborns are in their 70s, they (or their elders!) will be the largest age group in many countries.

#demography

#rstats code: github.com/schmert/bone...
December 4, 2024 at 1:42 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
drpsybuffy.bsky.social
Looks like it might be time to reiterate what psychologists have been screaming from the rooftops for years: learning styles as it is presented to the general public is a myth and it damages students’ sense of efficacy www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Beware the myth: learning styles affect parents’, children’s, and teachers’ thinking about children’s academic potential - npj Science of Learning
npj Science of Learning - Beware the myth: learning styles affect parents’, children’s, and teachers’ thinking about children’s academic potential
www.nature.com
December 3, 2024 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
bsky.app
Scientists, academics, researchers: We’re excited to share that @altmetric.com is now tracking mentions of your research on Bluesky! 🧪
altmetric.com Altmetric @altmetric.com · Dec 3
There are already many articles for which there is more attention on Bluesky than on other comparable micro-blogging sites, meaning the academic community and the general public have clearly adopted Bluesky as one of its core places to disseminate and discuss new research.

A Place of Joy.
‘A place of joy’: why scientists are joining the rush to Bluesky Researchers say the social-media platform — an alternative to X — offers more control over the content they see and the people they engage with.: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03784-6
December 3, 2024 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
maxroser.bsky.social
Saloni, Edouard, and Lucas wrote up the history of Our World in Data during the COVID pandemic.

It's about the impact we hoped to achieve and how it felt to us during that time.

ourworldindata.org/owid-covid-h...
How our team at Our World in Data became a global data source on COVID-19
Our small team made COVID-19 data clear, reliable, and accessible to a global audience. This is how it happened.
ourworldindata.org
November 24, 2024 at 10:23 AM
Reposted by Sam Clark
cschmert.bsky.social
Is there an equivalent graphic for water flouridation and tooth decay?
conradhackett.bsky.social Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · Nov 15
Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction

Graphic from Edward Tufte
More graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d... 🧪
Graphic shows dramatic reduction in polio, rubella, mumps, measles, and hepatitis A cases after the introduction of vaccines for each disease.
November 23, 2024 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
christophmolnar.bsky.social
Just realized BlueSky allows sharing valuable stuff cause it doesn't punish links. 🤩

Let's start with "What are embeddings" by @vickiboykis.com

The book is a great summary of embeddings, from history to modern approaches.

The best part: it's free.

Link: vickiboykis.com/what_are_emb...
Book outline Over the past decade, embeddings — numerical representations of machine learning features used as input to deep learning models — have become a foundational data structure in industrial machine learning systems. TF-IDF, PCA, and one-hot encoding have always been key tools in machine learning systems as ways to compress and make sense of large amounts of textual data. However, traditional approaches were limited in the amount of context they could reason about with increasing amounts of data. As the volume, velocity, and variety of data captured by modern applications has exploded, creating approaches specifically tailored to scale has become increasingly important. Google’s Word2Vec paper made an important step in moving from simple statistical representations to semantic meaning of words. The subsequent rise of the Transformer architecture and transfer learning, as well as the latest surge in generative methods has enabled the growth of embeddings as a foundational machine learning data structure. This survey paper aims to provide a deep dive into what embeddings are, their history, and usage patterns in industry. Cover image
November 22, 2024 at 11:13 AM
Reposted by Sam Clark
noamross.net
At @rOpenSci.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy we're pairing first-time code contributors with experienced maintainers. If you are an rOpenSci or other #RStats package author and want to help build the road for new contributors and get co-maintainers, sign up for co-working!

ropensci.org/blog/2024/10...
Looking for Maintainers to Support First-Time Contributors
Announcing a Community Call and Coworking sessions to support first contributions
ropensci.org
November 23, 2024 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
cschmert.bsky.social
Important to understand that (1) political appointees, not the university administration, are doing this; (2) they're not cancelling courses, but removing them from the list that satisfy breadth reqmts (i.e. death by strangling rather than a knife to the back).

www.tallahassee.com/story/news/l...
FSU board OKs removal of over 400 courses from general education offerings after review
“We’re living through an era of legislature-driven higher education reform,” FSU Provost Jim Clark said.
www.tallahassee.com
November 23, 2024 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
hswapnil.medsky.social
AI for medical transcription - in this case Whisper sneaks in its own hallucinatory phrases
apnews.com/article/ai-a...

though i wish the AI did invent ‘hyperactivated antibiotics’ we are going to need them soon 😏

h/t @placentadoc.bsky.social

#MedSky
Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said
Whisper is a popular transcription tool powered by artificial intelligence, but it has a major flaw. It makes things up that were never said.
apnews.com
November 23, 2024 at 12:27 PM
samclark.net
For the Thanksgiving break I will be in Guyana visiting one of our children who is working there for two years.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana
Guyana - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 22, 2024 at 1:53 PM
samclark.net
Just set up an account for the openVA Team @openva.net where I will post things related to the group.
November 21, 2024 at 3:15 PM
samclark.net
Backyard now!
November 21, 2024 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
charlesjkenny.bsky.social

CGD's very own starter pack... experts and staff former and present...

bsky.app/starter-pack...
November 20, 2024 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Sam Clark
timriffe1.bsky.social
Can anyone give lit tips for papers showing this qualitative age pattern of a mortality rate ratio (e.g. frail vs not, sick vs not, high SES vs low, in nursing home vs general pop, with disease vs without)?
November 21, 2024 at 10:46 AM
samclark.net
boghuma.bsky.social BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social · Nov 20
I can't find African Scientists and researchers easily on here. As the second largest continent with 1.3 billion inhabitants our perspectives matter. I'm creating a starterpack to find folks, follow them and amplify them. If you are an African Scientist let me know below so I can add you. Thanks.
November 21, 2024 at 10:46 AM