#OTD 1878 Kirstine Smith b (d 11 Nov 1939) inventor of optimal designs; her 1918 PhD thesis at UCL described G-optimal designs for polynomial regression. Her work was virtually unnoticed for almost a half-century until its rediscovery by Jack Kiefer in 1959. 1/4 🧵
Although AI improves performance during assisted sessions, performance drops sharply once it's removed. And relative to controls, AI-assisted participants also gave up more frequently on test problems.
🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning..
We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance.
And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use!
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(2) If you have ideas related to the role of #statsky, #AI, #realworlddata, or #digitalhealth in policy, we’d love to see them! Please share with your networks. #hpsr #hspr @drjwolfson.bsky.social @jaredhuling.bsky.social @mboudreaux.bsky.social @amstatnews.bsky.social @enar-ibs.bsky.social
ICHPS 2027, Jan 13-15, 2027. Annapolis, MD Evidence-Based Policy in Action: Statistics, AI, and Digital Health in Practice
🧵(1) @rhubbbstat.bsky.social , @drjasonbrinkley.bsky.social , @lizstuart.bsky.social , @sherrirose.bsky.social , @lucystats.bsky.social , @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social , and I remind you that #hpss is accepting invited session and workshop proposals for #ICHPS2027 by March 31!
I almost had a heart attack reading this
The most relieving 6 words that you can ever read in an email:
Post from Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com: In line with discussion about the job market, the latest majors being closed at Syracuse University: Nine majors "sunsetting": • Classical civilization • Classics (Greek and Latin) • Digital humanities • Fine arts • German • Latino-Latin American studies • Middle Eastern studies • Modern Jewish studies • Russian ALT
The First University in the Nation to Build a Center Dedicated to the Creator Economy Syracuse University is creating something that doesn't exist anywhere else in higher education. The Center for the Creator Economy is the first academic center of its kind on a U.S. college campus. Led jointly by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin). Whitman School of Management, the center reinforces Syracuse University's commitment to bold, forward-looking academic leadership. By aligning strengths in entrepreneurship, media, communications, athletics and digital infrastructure, the University is charting how higher education can prepare students for the 21st-century economy.
Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone
I appreciate that the bridge is usable now, but I don't think there's going to be any getting used to those red rails
the barriers really do make it feel like a jail, sadly. I get why they're there, but they absolutely make bridge 9 quite a bit less enjoyable
Stories of Grace and what she accomplished have always been deeply inspiring to me!
sooo bummed by this!
How AI Impacts Skill Formation Judy Hanwen Shen∗ Alex Tamkin† February 3, 2026 Abstract AI assistance produces significant productivity gains across professional domains, particularly for novice workers. Yet how this assistance affects the development of skills required to effectively supervise AI remains unclear. Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition in the process. We conduct randomized experiments to study how developers gained mastery of a new asynchronous programming library with and without the assistance of AI. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average. Participants who fully delegated coding tasks showed some productivity improvements, but at the cost of learning the library. We identify six distinct AI interaction patterns, three of which involve cognitive engagement and preserve learning outcomes even when participants receive AI assistance. Our findings suggest that AI-enhanced productivity is not a shortcut to competence and AI assistance should be carefully adopted into workflows to preserve skill formation – particularly in safety-critical domains.
Interesting paper, especially interesting it's coming from researchers at Anthropic arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
Ok, how about this happens at the Minneapolis Orchestra Hall, instead?
I've never been more proud to call Minneapolis my home
Standing with 65 of my UMN Law colleagues (and counting) to condemn ICE’s lawless conduct towards Minnesotans: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
With AI having such an influence on grant writing now, I find it harder and harder to justify the way things are done now
Excited for the polar vortex!
!!!
oof, I really do not like the updated guard railing. kills what was the best view in town
Whenever I see one of these I immediately think of Greece. I've never seen them anywhere else
I've never been more proud to call Minneapolis my home
This isn't normal stress. Stress doesn't begin to describe it
Great to hear! I suppose I should have used a more pointed word than "considered"
Really surprising it's taken this long to consider doing this. The parkways have become a huge problem with mile long lines of motorists using it as a commuting "cut through", which it's clearly not designed for
Or on a day like today you can ski to go skiing after work
Paul was such an incredible person. He made time for everyone. He was patient, humble, and so so supportive. I'm so sad to hear he's gone
By the end of the spring semester, Gwen reached a breaking point with AI. “I felt like I didn’t deserve to be a Yale student,” she said. She thought that she was throwing away her education and the scholarship paying to support it. She decided to quit using ChatGPT altogether. She didn’t ask AI to help her sentences flow or to strike the right tone. She didn’t even use it to brainstorm. “I think that’s a skill you need to have on your own. That’s the core of being original, anyway.” Gwen recalled completing her final assignments without AI, sitting in the middle of a crowded library so that she felt watched. “I struggled. And they weren’t very good.” It was only then, she said, that she started to understand just how much learning she had missed out on. ∎
New feature article from TNJ (nation's best student magazine): Inside Yale’s Quiet Reckoning with AI thenewjournalatyale.com/2025/10/insi...
‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...
from my own ride today. endless beautiful scenery to get out and enjoy in the Twin Cities!