/stat_rethinking_2023

Statistical Rethinking Course for Jan-Mar 2023

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Statistical Rethinking (2023 Edition)

Instructor: Richard McElreath

Lectures: Uploaded and pre-recorded, two per week

Discussion: Online (Zoom), Fridays 3pm-4pm Central European (Berlin) Time

Purpose

This course teaches data analysis, but it focuses on scientific models. The unfortunate truth about data is that nothing much can be done with it, until we say what caused it. We will prioritize conceptual, causal models and precise questions about those models. We will use Bayesian data analysis to connect scientific models to evidence. And we will learn powerful computational tools for coping with high-dimension, imperfect data of the kind that biologists and social scientists face.

Format

Online, flipped instruction. I will pre-record the lectures each week. We'll meet online once a week for an hour to discuss the material. The discussion time (3-4pm Berlin Time) should allow people in the Americas to join in their morning.

We'll use the 2nd edition of my book, <Statistical Rethinking>, and possibly some draft chapters for the 3rd edition. I'll provide a PDF of the book to enrolled students.

Registration: Please sign up via <EventBright>. There are 80 slots for course credit. I've set aside 120 audit tickets at the link, for people who want to participate, but who don't need course credit.

Calendar & Topical Outline

There are 10 weeks of instruction. Links to lecture recordings will appear in this table. Weekly problem sets are assigned on Fridays and due the next Friday, when we discuss the solutions in the weekly online meeting.

Week ## Meeting date Reading Lectures
Week 01 06 January Chapters 1, 2 and 3 [1] Science Before Statistics
[2] Models & Bayesian Updating
Week 02 13 January Chapter 4 [3] Basic Regression
[4] Not-so-basic Regression
Week 03 20 January Chapters 5 and 6 [5] Confounding
[6] Even Worse Confounding
Week 04 27 January Chapters 7 and 8 [7] Overfitting
[8] Interactions
Week 05 03 February Chapters 9, 10 and 11 [9] Markov chain Monte Carlo
[10] Binomial GLMs
Week 06 10 February Chapters 11 and 12 [11] Poisson GLMs
[12] Ordered Categories
Week 07 17 February Chapter 13 [13] Multilevel Models
[14] Multi-Multilevel Models
Week 08 24 February Chapter 14 [15] Varying Slopes
[16] Gaussian Processes
Week 09 03 March Chapter 15 [17] Measurement Error
[18] Missing Data
Week 10 10 March Chapters 16 and 17 [19] Beyond GLMs: State-space Models, ODEs
[20] Horoscopes

Coding

This course involves a lot of scripting. Students can engage with the material using either the original R code examples or one of several conversions to other computing environments. The conversions are not always exact, but they are rather complete. Each option is listed below.

Original R Flavor

For those who want to use the original R code examples in the print book, you need to install the rethinking R package. The code is all on github https://github.com/rmcelreath/rethinking/ and there are additional details about the package there, including information about using the more-up-to-date cmdstanr instead of rstan as the underlying MCMC engine.

R + Tidyverse + ggplot2 + brms

The <Tidyverse/brms> conversion is very high quality and complete through Chapter 14.

Python and PyMC3

The <Python/PyMC3> conversion is quite complete.

Julia and Turing

The <Julia/Turing> conversion is not as complete, but is growing fast and presents the Rethinking examples in multiple Julia engines, including the great <TuringLang>.

Other

The are several other conversions. See the full list at https://xcelab.net/rm/statistical-rethinking/.

Homework and solutions

I will also post problem sets and solutions. Check the folders at the top of the repository.