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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 1d

If your TV is very well secured and can't be knocked over, try looking up TV for cats on youtube or wherever. Our cat went wild for it, but we worried she would knock over the TV to she was so into it

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 1d

While the old adage holds some truth, gotta be at least some astroturfing going on if the hate mail is internet based, I would imagine (or at least, hope)

Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, I agree with that. I first get into it when teaching multiple regression explaining what all the slopes mean in words, so different context i think

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Reposted by Sean Mackinnon

Oyasumimir @strangestquiet.bsky.social · 2d

Robert'); DROP TABLE students

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 5d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 1d

When I teach it, I get them to check but that it can't be divorced from the semantic meaning of the two covariates.

In a world where everyone has a clear head in terms of causality and confounding from the study outset, sure it doesn't really matter but students are often forging ahead w/o that imo

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 1d

I think people talk around each other on this, b/c if its

y ~ c1 + c2 + x1

Colinearity among c1 & c2 doesn't really hurt the slope for x, but it does often negatively affect the interpretation of the slopes for c1 & c2.

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 3d

Every time I see these things, its alarmist, but also that post doesn't actually show the actual code and results generated so I can't really evaluate the claim.

It's always people telling me something awesome was created, w/o sharing the thing that was created

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 4d

As an analogy, I also regularly get COVID shots, and had a breakthrough COVID infection while on vacation.

That doesn't mean I'm anti-vaccine, but it still does suck that in this one specific instance, the vaccine didn't help me personally.

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 4d

Yeah, I had a similar post recently and that's basically the issue.

I did a hard, time-consuming thing and learned little of interest. Doesn't mean MI is bad, but one can empathize with the disappointment.

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 4d

Fine-tuning a ggplot's aesthetic sensibilities is a time-honoured way to procrastinate from doing something you'd hate even more

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Reposted by Sean Mackinnon

Dermot Lynott @dermotlynott.bsky.social · Jun 28

There is a passage in Raymond E. Feist’s Magician books where the apprentices are alone in a room, each one hammering a nail into a sheet of wool until it falls to the floor, only to pick up the nail and begin the process again.

I guess what I’m saying is, welcome to academia; hope you like it!

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 4d

I choose willful ignorance

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 7d

Maybe the analogy is more like "Sure, climate collapse is happening, but hey, at least we'll get some good beach days"

I do think that generative AI is going to force most classes either to (a) abandon grading or (b) abandon online assessment / graded homework.

While I pine for a, probably b

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 8d

I wish lmao

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 8d

I think if Bluesky goes the way of X I might just quit public social media entirely, group chats only for life

Don't got it in me to pack it up again, and increadingly wonder if public social media was a mistake for society, tbh

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 12d

After a year they each produce reports. All 4 are spliced together into one document. No numbers ever double checked, hell no codebook produced. A 5th person wries up the intro as 1st author, the original analysts graduate. Someone asks for code so they say "No" because all the above is embarrassing

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 12d

Not principled, but workflow of some people is so disorganized, I think a lot of analysts find it hard to imagine.

Like, imagine you noodle around in "data (1) (1) (1).sav" for a while, write some numbers in a Word file, and send the dataset off by email to 3 different students who each work alone

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 12d

Me neither, which is kind of why I asked. If it's so prevalent, maybe it has some special benefit I'm missing even though it seems bad to me?

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 12d

Being the stats consultant on a lot of things, it kind of gets exhausting sometimes where everything has to come together on such a rapid timeframe, it feels like just holding together a project with duct tape.

I'd honestly love working with people taking it slow, and matching models to questions

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 12d

So "most scientists" are intellectually bankrupt then, you mean :p

(I suspect we agree on most points here, tbh. Everything in science just feels overly rushed, probably linked to general austerity and decreased funding in the sector as much as individual scientists' own knowledge limitations)

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 12d

Ah, methodological doomerism, the ultimate "all models are wrong" defense

(I get it though, lots of precise answers to the wrong question out there! I'm more personally comfortable making the best of bad situations, even if everything is strictly speaking, not 100% true)

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 12d

All good, I basically do something like that. The percent decrease effect size just seemed kind of useless to me, and just making sure I'm not missing something obvious.

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 12d

Real talk here: What analysis method that tests broadly similar research questions would you consider not intellectually bankrupt?

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 13d

We all have to lie to ourselves about that every year, only way to keep sane hahaha

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Sean Mackinnon @seanpmackinnon.bsky.social · 13d

Walking the razors edge on deadlines just to feel something. Bodes well for the term lmao

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