Now out: How did earthquakes come to have a (quantitative) size? How can we quantify without experimental control? @cristianlarph.bsky.social and I answer both questions and show their implications for human science measurement.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#philsci #histsci #seismology
Why would you believe me? Why would you??
Believe in your work. Stop ending papers with “More research is needed” and start concluding with “No more research on this topic is needed.”
I know I’m a good reviewer because authors always thank me for my helpful comments.
Costco Connection magazine just published a full article about why and how to stop your car
Interesting story about legendary Bayesian Sir Harold Jeffreys refusing to update his prior
where do you think the term occam’s razor comes from? i suspect it originates from the Oceanic Coastal and Continental Alliiance of Magistrates (OCCAM), an ancient global court system that was founded in what we understand to be the 14th century, but what they know to be the 32nd. they were feared t
The 1PL estimates a common discrimination parameter but fixes var(theta) = 1. The Rasch model fixes common discrimination = 1 but estimates var(theta).
I enjoyed the Super Bowl halftime show but it would be nice if next year the halftime show was a plain black screen for fifteen minutes, giving football fans a quiet moment to contemplate their own mortality
Headline from British Vogue I Ate Nothing But Sardines For 3 Days - Here's How My Skin Changed with a photo of a sardine
Only British Vogue has the courage to publish true science as it was practiced in the 18th century Transactions of the Royal Society
I love to read about a big number freethoughtblogs.com/reprobate/20...
Due date for proposals was Feb 1, but if you submit a proposal by Feb 15, we will add it to the stack. Please share this announcement!
From Murkowski (1997), The History of Classical and Frequentist Theories of Probability: "What is the probability of throwing “heads” on the single toss of a coin? If we have no reason to think otherwise, heads or tails are equally probable; and since heads or tails exhausts the possible set of events or outcomes (when some smart aleck in the back row asks what happens if the coin gets lodged in a crack in the floor and hence lands on its side, and someone else giggles that it is a trick coin, we shall exercise our prerogative as teacher to tell them to shut up), the probability of throwing a head equals one-half."
Exercise your prerogative as teacher
Scientists should invent a Good Day clock that counts down to everything being fine
It is my thesis that the operation of the living individual and the operation of some of the newer communication machines are precisely parallel. Both of them have sensory receptors as one stage in their cycle of operation: that is, in both of them there exists a special apparatus for collecting information from the outer world at low energy levels, and for making it available in the operation of the individual or of the machine. In both cases these external messages are not taken neat, but through the internal transforming powers of the apparatus, whether it be alive or dead. The information is then turned into a new form available for the further stages of performance. In both the animal and the machine this performance is made to be effective on the outer world. In both of them, their performed action on the outer world, and not merely their intended action, is reported back to the central regulatory apparatus. This complex of behavior is ignored by the average man, and in particular does not play the role that it should in our habitual analysis of society.
This is true whether we consider human beings alone, or in conjunction with types of automata which participate in a two-way relation with the world about them. In this, our view of society differs from the ideal of society which is held by many Fascists, Strong Men in Business, and Government. Similar men of ambition for power are not entirely unknown in scientific and educational institutions. Such people prefer an organization in which all orders come from
above, and none return. The human beings under them have been reduced to the level of effectors for a supposedly higher nervous organism. I wish to devote this book to a protest against this inhuman use of human beings; for in my mind, any use of a human being in which less is demanded of him and less is attributed to him than his full status is a degradation and a waste. It is a degradation to a human being to chain him to an oar and use him as a source of power; but it is an almost equal degradation to assign him a purely repetitive task in a factory, which demands less than a millionth of his brain capacity. It is simpler to organize a factory or galley which uses individual human beings for a trivial fraction of their worth than it is to provide a world in which they can grow to their full stature. Those who suffer from a power complex find the mechanization of man a simple way to realize their ambitions. I say, that this easy path to power is in fact not only a rejection of everything that I consider to be of moral worth in the human race, but also a rejection of our now very tenuous opportunities for a considerable period of human survival.
Looking through Norbert Wiener's 1950 book "The Human Use of Human Beings," just now, this 2-paragraph passage jumped out at me from the first chapter. Extremely relevant to our troubling times.
Researchers often treat ordinal variables as continuous. What if we could mimic this in an ordinal factor analysis/IRT model? We propose new identification constraints so that the latent variable goes from 1 to (# of ordered categories), with connections to treating ordinal variables as continuous.
Scene from Sorry, Baby. A judge says “on your questionnaire, you wrote—“
“How would your friends describe you?”
“”Smart.””
“Crossed out, then the word “tall.””
Excited to share a new call for papers for a special issue in Psychometrika focused on Data Intensive Methods in Psychometrics that I'll be guest editing with @kyliegorney.bsky.social, @jmbh.bsky.social, @leonievogelsmeier.bsky.social, and Ben Domingue: www.psychometricsociety.org/post/call-sp...
Enroll in my new workshop to realize your dream of learning IRT
#quantpsych #psychometrics #psychsky #statssky
Nori the Shiba Inu basking in the sun fully unaware of AI
Nori the Shiba Inu basking in the sun dreaming of anything but AI
When you know nothing about AI
I didn’t even know what pineapple really tasted like until I bought some from a vendor on the beach in Costa Rica, and his 10 year old son cut it up for me using a full size machete
Consider submitting a proposal to the (open access) Psychometrika special issue on Variable Selection for Complex Psychometric Data, with a proposal deadline of Jan 15. Full details:
My first read of 2026 will be this biography of Willard Gibbs by poet Muriel Rukeyser (published by @mariapopova.bsky.social)
Asking for a friend
Reupping the call below + sharing that @winterstat.bsky.social and I will be presenting our work on model evaluation & fitting propensity analysis at the upcoming Pacific Quant Psych Conference (Jun 29-30; UC Davis) organized by @mijke.bsky.social and Ben Domingue. Request for proposals coming soon!
here’s a free version:
neat_research_panel <- data.frame(
id = 1:100,
treatment = sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 100, replace = TRUE),
outcome = rnorm(100, mean = 50, sd = 5)
)
