Richard McElreath | Lightnews

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛

@rmcelreath.bsky.social

17K followers 1.3K following 1.1K posts

Anthropologist - Bayesian modeling - science reform - cat and cooking content too - Director @ MPI for evolutionary anthropology https://www.eva.mpg.de/ecology/staff/richard-mcelreath/

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Richard McElreath is an American professor of anthropology and a director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is an author of the Statistical Rethinking applied Bayesian statistics textbook, among the first to largely rely on the Stan statistical environment, and the accompanying rethinking R language package. .. more

Psychology 22%

Sociology 21%

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · Sep 19

If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 1h

You mean direct vs total causal effect? Or just use of structural models to derive adjustment sets? I think simplest example of latter would be widespread adjustment for post-treatment variables in experiments doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 2h

Zizek is right: There is a reason Die Hard is set at Christmas. It is a Christmas movie because of the symbolic contrasts that allows. It is a profoundly dumb movie, yes, but it would not be the same movie if set on say Halloween, when we expect violence.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 2h

"You see, Christmas is not a holiday. It is an ideological apparatus of family unity and consumer fetishism. The magic of the film—what we enjoy without knowing—is this collision between sweet kitsch and brutal violence. This overlap is not accidental; it is the truth of Christmas under capitalism."

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 2h

Note that no adjustment is necessary to estimate total effect of A on Y. It's the direct effect that needs adjustment.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 2h

cool confounding and adjustment example by @jofrhwld.bsky.social below. To estimate A –direct–> Y, must adjust for B (and C or D). If you adjust for C, it partly opens collider D, so non-causal path D <– B –> Y is opened. Easy to forget about descendants partly opening parents. Sneaky colliders.

Josef Fruehwald @jofrhwld.bsky.social · 17h

ok, causal inference people: Lets say I have the following DAG. I see the backdoor path through C, so I adjust for C. dagitty says I *also* need to adjust for B, but I'm not sure why since there's a collider along its path?

Reposted by Richard McElreath

Josef Fruehwald @jofrhwld.bsky.social · 17h

Reposted by Richard McElreath, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Clark Gray

Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) @mpidr.bsky.social · 19h

Come visit MPIDR in ☀️Summer 2026☀️
📣Call for Application for the "Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program"
📅☀️June 8th – August 21st, 2026☀️
🗺️MPIDR in Rostock, Germany
Application Deadline: Jan 14, 2026
Apply here and learn more:
incubator.demogr.mpg.de

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 4d

this is harrassment

short section of Satie's 1st Gnossienne with direction "Postulez en vous-même" (apply yourself)

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 5d

Just as I don't think more of a paper just bc it's in Nature, I won't think less of a paper just bc it's in SR

There are indeed lots of great things in there

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 5d

Nature Scientific Reports is the third most cited journal in the world smdh

Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex @smutclyde.bsky.social · 5d

Rate your score on Factor Fexcectorn.

Well done, Scientific Reports. pubpeer.com/publications...

Reposted by Richard McElreath

W+EBS @w-plus-ebs.bsky.social · 5d

Happy #WplusEBSWednesday! Interested in learning about Bayesian data analysis but unsure how to start?

Today, a follower would like to recommend a great online resource: a series of YouTube videos by @rmcelreath.bsky.social based on his book Statistical Rethinking!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdnM...

Statistical Rethinking 2023 - 01 - The Golem of Prague

YouTube video by Richard McElreath

www.youtube.com

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, Brigitte Nerlich , and 9 more Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, Brigitte Nerlich, Richard McElreath, Martin Tomko, Peter Campbell, Stephen D. Murphy, Andrew Livingstone, Olivier Morin, Zen Faulkes, John R. Kerr, David Spurrett

Smut Clyde, X-Ray Haruspex @smutclyde.bsky.social · 5d

Rate your score on Factor Fexcectorn.

Well done, Scientific Reports. pubpeer.com/publications...

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 5d

It's the Romans' fault if you think about it

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 5d

This sounds like @avehtari.bsky.social territory

Reposted by Richard McElreath

Richard D. Morey @richarddmorey.bsky.social · 5d

Anyone have experience analysing periodicity (eg with Fourier) in data with gaps/missings (eg weekends, holidays) - this is in a health context if it helps? Looking for guides to pitfalls, etc

Reposted by Richard McElreath

Oblique Strategies @oblique-strategies.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 5d

Discard an axiom

#obliquestrategies

A black-and-white photo of an Oblique Strategy card. The card reads: 'Discard an axiom'.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d

no thread mentioning thanksgiving turkeys complete without bsky.app/profile/cpsc...

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission @cpsc.gov · 8d

There is a post circulating on Bluesky encouraging the moving of a frozen turkey straight into a pot of hot oil. We are combating this misinformation the best way we know how - through the power of dance music.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d

apparently i cannot spell "buffalo" - baffulo looks fine to me

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d

there's a place in my neighborhood that serves buffola burgers, which are great, but I think they must be Polish buffola

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d

were american bison domesticated at all? they are pretty easy to ranch

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d

is it odd that the Americas produced so many great plant domesticates — potatoes, chilis, avocados, corn, chocolate — but few good animal domesticates? guinea pugs, llama, turkey-cocks, a few surviving dog breeds (husky?)

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d

in anticipation of turkey defenders

a man in a tuxedo is asking why are you booing me i 'm right

ALT: a man in a tuxedo is asking why are you booing me i 'm right

media.tenor.com

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d

ppl are saying blueskey is boring so here is my cat Mischka inspecting a frozen duck. this is for thanksgiving - finding a quality turkey in Germany is not easy. But since turkey is an angry trash bird, a succulent duck will do just fine

picture of a cat inspecting a packaged frozen duck

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

I explain this trick in my online lectures - lecture 13 40min: youtu.be/sgqMkZeslxA?...

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

done and done - problem was strong posterior curvature (phrasing!) so I refactored the priors and now all smooth

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

The quote in the dashboard is from renowned American statistician O'Shea Jackson

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

A mentee sent me this broken chain and imma fix. This will be my one completed task of the day, shining high above dark swamp of collapsed scientific construction sites lurking beneath the clouds of bureaucracy!

Reposted by Richard McElreath

Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · 7d

I had not seen this before. Very interesting, by Jane Goodall - taken from the transcipt of this interview: freakonomics.com/podcast/jane...

"LEVITT: I think it’s fair to say that the most impactful single insight from your early work is that the chimps in the wild use tools. They make tools. They take objects and intentionally alter those objects to make them better at accomplishing a task. Like stripping away at blades of grass until they’re just right for dipping into the anthills. And before you observed that, there was a thought that humans were the only species that made these tools. To you personally, is that the most notable insight?

GOODALL: When I started in 1960, nobody had studied chimps in the wild. No scientist, that is. If, at that time you had gone into some of the indigenous people living deep in the rainforest, they would’ve told you chimpanzees used to make tools. They knew it. But, of course, now we are back on the scientific bandwagon. So when I saw David Greybeard using and making tools, I knew it was really exciting. It was what enabled Leakey to go to the Geographic to get funding when my six months of money ran out. But there’s a wonderful book written by a psychologist, called The Mentality of Apes, Wolfgang Köhler, and he studied this colony of captive apes, and he described so many innovative use of objects. But at that time, the scientific community said, “Oh, well, these were chimpanzees in captivity. Therefore, our human characteristics had rubbed off onto them. It’s nothing to do with what they, as wild individuals, would be capable of.” So when I observed that momentous day of David using and making tools, I knew that it was going to make a big impression on the science of the time. But I wasn’t surprised because I, unlike the other scientists, had believed that what Köhler was reporting was the ability of chimpanzees to use and make tools."

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