Alex Diaz-Papkovich
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alexandr.bsky.social
Alex Diaz-Papkovich
@alexandr.bsky.social
610 followers 800 following 130 posts
Statistician and mathematician. Postdoc working on population genetics at the Data Science Institute at Brown University. UWaterloo, Carleton, and McGill alum. Skeets are my own. He/him.

https://github.com/diazale
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alexandr.bsky.social
Yep, I've got quite a few pinball collisions like that, e.g.: www.bayshorebroadcasting.ca/2023/03/05/o...
Owen Sound Vehicle Collision Results In Gas Leak
Owen Sound Police say a two-vehicle collision that severed a natural gas line resulted in a three-hour road cl...
www.bayshorebroadcasting.ca
November 26, 2025 at 2:53 AM
alexandr.bsky.social
Yep, it's one of my favourite books (and one I read while collecting this data!) Definitely made me think about things like snow removal and how/where infrastructure is prioritized (e.g. commuter routes vs errand routes)
November 25, 2025 at 10:16 PM
alexandr.bsky.social
The dataset itself is available here: github.com/diazale/deat...
GitHub - diazale/death_by_car: Tracking collisions between vehicles and pedestrians/cyclists in Canada.
Tracking collisions between vehicles and pedestrians/cyclists in Canada. - diazale/death_by_car
github.com
November 25, 2025 at 7:29 PM
alexandr.bsky.social
Some of the questions I've had while collecting data:
* Should 17-year-olds be allowed to drive a Hummer H3?
* What is a "non life threatening injury"?
* Are you safe from cars while sleeping in bed?
* How many people die in parking lots?
* What happens when snowplows get too big?
November 25, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by Alex Diaz-Papkovich
brendelbored.bsky.social
Give Jamie Loftus a Golden Globe you cowards
November 19, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Reposted by Alex Diaz-Papkovich
copernicusecmwf.bsky.social
🧵
C3S data shows that every year since the Paris Agreement has ranked among the 10 warmest on record.
November 10, 2025 at 2:46 PM
alexandr.bsky.social
they had grok rewrite the article "race and genetics" to make it sound like race as a concept is supported by genomic studies that can be used interchangeable with genetics (it's not, and genomics researchers explicitly advise against this, e.g. see this Nature Genetics article)
excerpt from wikipedia "race and genetics" Researchers have investigated the relationship between race and genetics as part of efforts to understand how biology may or may not contribute to human racial categorization. Today, the consensus among scientists is that race is a social construct, and that using it as a proxy for genetic differences among populations is misleading.[1][2] Many constructions of race are associated with phenotypical traits and geographic ancestry, and scholars like Carl Linnaeus have proposed scientific models for the organization of race since at least the 18th century. Following the discovery of Mendelian genetics and the mapping of the human genome, questions about the biology of race have often been framed in terms of genetics.[3] A wide range of research methods have been employed to examine patterns of human variation and their relations to ancestry and racial groups, including studies of individual traits,[4] studies of large populations and genetic clusters,[5] and studies of genetic risk factors for disease.[6] Research into race and genetics has also been criticized as emerging from, or contributing to, scientific racism. Genetic studies of traits and populations have been used to justify social inequalities associated with race,[7] despite the fact that patterns of human variation have been shown to be mostly clinal,[8] with human genetic code being approximately 99.6% – 99.9% identical between individuals and without clear boundaries between groups.[9][10] Some researchers have argued that race can act as a proxy for genetic ancestry because individuals of the same racial category may share a common ancestry, but this view has fallen increasingly out of favor among experts.[2][11] The mainstream view is that it is necessary to distinguish between biology and the social, political, cultural, and economic factors that contribute to conceptions of race excerpt from grok Race and genetics refers to the scientific study of how patterns of genetic variation in humans form discrete population clusters that align closely with traditional continental racial categories, such as those originating from Africa, Europe, East Asia, and the Americas, as demonstrated by analyses of genomic data using methods like principal component analysis and Bayesian clustering algorithms.[1] These clusters arise from historical geographic isolation and migration patterns, accounting for a small but statistically significant portion—typically 3-5%—of total human genetic variation between major groups, while the majority occurs within populations. A landmark study by Rosenberg et al. (2002) applied the STRUCTURE program to genotypes from 1,056 individuals across 52 populations at 377 microsatellite loci, consistently inferring five to six genetic clusters that correspond to broad geographic regions and self-identified racial ancestries, even when sampling was designed to obscure continental boundaries. This structure enables accurate inference of an individual's ancestry and has practical applications in fields like forensic genetics, ancestry tracing, and personalized medicine, where genetic differences between clusters influence disease risk alleles and drug metabolism responses. Controversies persist due to interpretations like Lewontin's 1972 apportionment, which emphasized that 85% of variation is within populations, leading some to argue against the biological validity of race; however, A.W.F. Edwards (2003) critiqued this as "Lewontin's fallacy," noting that multivariate correlations across loci allow reliable discrimination between populations despite high within-group variance, akin to distinguishing sand dunes by overall shape rather than individual grains. Empirical genomic data thus supports race as a proxy for ancestry-based genetic substructure, though institutional biases in academia and media often understate these findings Guidance on use of race, ethnicity, and geographic origin as proxies for genetic ancestry groups in biomedical publications In March 2023, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a consensus study report titled Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research1. Sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health, the report is more than a discussion of the use of terminology; the authors of the NASEM report suggest a tectonic shift away from current models that use race, ethnicity, and geographic origin as proxies for genetic ancestry groups (that is, a set of individuals who share more similar genetic ancestries) in genetic and genomic science. The recommendations are rooted in evidence that genetic variation in individuals falls, in general, on a continuum of variation not captured well by existing population descriptors and that the ongoing use of such descriptors as analytical variables jeopardizes the scientific validity of research2. Furthermore, the authors of the NASEM report point out that current scientific practices can sometimes perpetuate harmful typological thinking about individuals, including racism. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-024-01708-8 We journal editors concur broadly with the consensus study recommendations that population descriptors such as race, ethnicity, and geographic origin should no longer be used as proxies for genetic ancestry groups in genomic science. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-024-01708-8
October 28, 2025 at 1:20 AM
alexandr.bsky.social
I actually never biked in the winter (tiny apartment without winter bike storage) but would jog in the lanes in the winter
October 23, 2025 at 1:22 AM