Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

A special interdisciplinary place to do research, and one of the few places that funds all sorts of anthropology. I hear the food is good too

Not now, Polar Vortex, not now

Cooking with Mischka: Chicken schnitzel. Lemon-brined chicken breast, flour-egg-breadcrumb spa treatment, fried in butter. Mischka was very stimulated by the entire process.

There are certainly animals with weird complex genomes. But let me update your graph with the maize numbers.

Zelenskyy has granted a long-form interview on the influential YouTube channel Diary of a CEO. This is a smart move, the channel is watched across many types of audiences in the U.S., including conservative ones. Please go over to the video, like it, spread it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x9d...

I have just encountered this 30-40 olives meme format. I feel attacked. You really *can* eat 30 to 40 olives for dinner. I have done it several times. I wrote large sections of my book on olives. You will certainly not regret eating 30 to 40 olives.

Lecture 2 is online - The Post-Darwinian (aka Modern) Synthesis. The problem of blending, maintaining variation, and extended variation; forces of evolution; rough history of population genetics, its importance to the study of human evolution. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cekf...

And over here, ladies and gentlemen: the Kalman filter estimating Apollo 11's position. (Play with it in my lecture slides at glouppe.github.io/info8006-int...)

(1/7) Interesting new pre-print by Reich (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...). Archaeological and geographical claims can be questioned imo though. Some kind of population contact between an early Homo sapiens population and Neanderthals is evident, but there are lots different specific scenarios.

Jensen has done his research. He knows the Germans are the softest population for this conversion, because of the popularity in Germany of tedious simulation games like Farming Simulator

I want to open my next lecture by talking about how modern mathematical evolutionary theory lets us perform "time travel", forward and backward inference. I somehow think my students don't know "Back To The Future" (1985). Is there a recent time travel movie they would all recognize?

Faroe Islands are incredible 😍

my reaction when a student successfully performs absolutely anything i have taught them

I have never seen a photo of Calvino before but somehow this is exactly how I pictured him (I discovered his books/stories in college and binged on them)

I know I need to update my rethinking package for this. It’s a busy season but will get it done

I was traveling and conferencing last week, so naturally the amount of email and DMs I have this Monday morning is truly impossible to conquer. Please be patient as I spend the next few days digging

"In a just world, every article about GPT-4 would nod toward Barthes and Foucault." Downing spoonfuls of mayonnaise as I read Ted's essay, because it is too spicy (link in quote below)

An extraordinary example of a paper that cannot logically address its estimand: effect of restricting under-18 playtime. But sample has no age data, and most of the sample is adults. Reviewer #3 even noted this, and authors agreed. See link in quoted for details.

If you want to see a really good example of the big data paradox in action: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Australopithecus 3 million years ago:

Mischka is planning some mischief this #caturday

Christian Robert reviews Bayesian Workflow, suggests the abbreviation BaWoFlow. xianblog.fr/2026/10/08/b...

super green

Lichtfest is a Leipzig tradition commemorating the 1989 demonstrations that eventually lead to the fall of the Wall. It mainly involves walking in the rain trying to keep a candle lit womp womp

Reading Statistical Rethinking by @rmcelreath.bsky.social and “If you are confused, it is only because you are trying to understand” is such a great line that I am definitely going to have to quote it when I’m teaching.

I haven't taught a survey course in human evolution in the last decade, but starting next week (!!) I will try again. I plan to record the lectures. But the lab practicals can't be shared online, unfortunately. Currently deciding how much math I can/should make the students do

Another thing I really liked from @rmcelreath.bsky.social’s talk yesterday: he introduced #BayesianWorkflow, with Andrew Gelman, Aki Vehtari et al. It’s much more than just #Bayesian inference: … 1/2

two small children on the train arguing back and forth about how the Luftballon sticks to the seat: it’s MAGIC, no SCIENCE, MAGIC, SCIENCE they laugh though as if they’re agreeing

Absolutely engaging talk from @rmcelreath.bsky.social at the Workshop for Data Management at the @unibonn.bsky.social! Data insurgents, unite! (epidemiologists and economists are also welcome 😂)

Once again grateful that one can get TeX source from arXiv papers, so that I didn't have to typeset Ramanujan's mad formula for pi myself (just an intro slide in a talk I am giving tomorrow)