NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics?
1) Write NSF
2) Write your Congressperson
3) CC us at grfp@grant-witness.us so we can compile + follow up
Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter
I appreciate that all the figure/table cross refs etc are built in instead of having to wrangle bookdown. Means it's a more streamlined experience for complex documents like manuscripts, which is a primary use case for me. Sweave could do all that, but it's easier to read/write markdown vs TeX.
Every term without a fault an undergrad tells me "I spent 2 hours on this problem and you identified it in under a minute", and every term without a fault I answer "it took me over a decade to identify it in under a minute"
For #NSF and #NIH watchers, Grant Witness now has interactive data on numbers of grants and total funding obligations, broken down by institute and directorate, new awards and non-competitive renewals.
The stranglehold on new awards is still a disaster.
grant-witness.us/funding_curv...
Congrats Jason!!
Data Organization in Spreadsheets Karl W. Broman & Kara H. Woo Pages 2-10 | Received 01 Jun 2017, Accepted author version posted online: 29 Sep 2017, Published online: 24 Apr 2018 1. Introduction 2. Be Consistent 3. Choose Good Names for Things 4. Write Dates as YYYY-MM-DD 5. No Empty Cells 6. Put Just One Thing in a Cell 7. Make it a Rectangle 8. Create a Data Dictionary 9. No Calculations in the Raw Data Files 10. Do Not Use Font Color or Highlighting as Data 11. Make Backups 12. Use Data Validation to Avoid Errors 13. Save the Data in Plain Text Files ABSTRACT Spreadsheets are widely used software tools for data entry, storage, analysis, and visualization. Focusing on the data entry and storage aspects, this article offers practical recommendations for organizing spreadsheet data to reduce errors and ease later analyses. The basic principles are: be consistent, write dates like YYYY-MM-DD, do not leave any cells empty, put just one thing in a cell, organize the data as a single rectangle (with subjects as rows and variables as columns, and with a single header row), create a data dictionary, do not include calculations in the raw data files, do not use font color or highlighting as data, choose good names for things, make backups, use data validation to avoid data entry errors, and save the data in plain text files.
Every day is a good day for sharing one of the most useful papers about research data ever written. PLEASE get your people to understand and follow this advice.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
I used one of these in 5th grade. Could connect to the state library system! And chat with other students in the class, in the days before AIM and ICQ. Fond memories of this tech.
hip hip foray!
Good 'ol object of type 'closure' is not subsettable
A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.
NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)
Directorates to follow
1/10
"Ten simple rules for teaching data science": arxiv.org/abs/2602.02874
A new preprint by @minecr.bsky.social and myself. We'd love any feedback!
Thanks for the love! This was a bright spot to my day (and unexpected!) @phytobio.me @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social
There's some content -- looks like someone is messing with the CSS?
It looks like maybe somebody broke the CSS?
Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp....
genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
A pumpkin carved to depict an agarose gel electrophoesis with all lanes blank apart from the size ladder on the left and a single band in the lane on the far right
When all your PCRs fail, except for the negative control 😱
Yeah this caused quite a bit of consternation yesterday
Just announced from @anthropic.com
This stuff is moving very fast. www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...
I’m going to start doing “wholesome graphic of the day” posts lol. The maps and infographics have been veering political
Anyhoo, here’s every apple
A pika sits on a mossy rock.
Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head.
An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye.
An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.
"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"
Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.
The other issue is the one you've raised as have a few others -- LLMs can be very useful for experts who can catch errors and refine responses, but bootstrapping conceptual expertise when novices start with LLMs on day 1 is going to be a hard pedagogical challenge.
We were discussing this issue at the @cu-esiil.bsky.social meeting a few weeks ago. On one hand, LLMs seem like just higher level abstractions, like going from assembly to Fortran to R. On the other, they are probabilistic not deterministic, which makes them different.
Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment.
The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP
jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/
I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.
It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.
Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats
Saddened to learn of the passing of Moselio "Elio" Schaechter—Distinguished Professor at Tufts, SDSU and UCSD—humanist and visionary leader in the fields of microbiology and scientific communication—mentor, friend, and inspiration to me and so many others
Small Things Considered
Big Things Achieved
I spoke with Kari Jordan and Erin Becker of The Carpentries about why they declined a $1.5M NSF grant intended to expand data science training. Their decision highlights the growing intersection of #science, #DEI, and federal policy.
Read the full story on Forbes: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...
Do you love alpine plants, ancient DNA, and/or population genetics? My lab will be hiring a postdoc soon to be based at the University of Maine! We’re looking for someone who uses genetic tools and thinks like a community ecologist. Happy to chat at #ESA2025 if you’re interested.
ICYMI: In September 2024, The Carpentries submitted a proposal for 1.5 million USD to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) Program, and were extremely pleased to learn that the proposal was recommended for funding.
However...
So if Sanger capillary is the Greatest Generation (sequenced human genome primer walking uphill both ways thankyouverymuch), and AVITI is Gen alpha, does that make 454 Gen x or the millennials
