LightNews — News, ranked by scholars

Matthew Kay

@mjskay.com

12K followers 1.1K following 1.8K posts

Assoc Prof Computer Science and Communication Studies at Northwestern. Infovis, HCI. Author of tidybayes & ggdist R pkgs. he/him. 🏳️‍🌈 https://mjskay.com/

Co-director https://mucollective.northwestern.edu

Co-founder https://journalovi.org

Posts Replies Media Videos

Pinned

Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · Sep 7

I work in #datavis, best known for uncertainty vis: see my work on election forecast vis (forecasts.cs.northwestern.edu), this talk (youtu.be/E1kSnWvqCw0), or my lab (mucollective.northwestern.edu)

I like writing #rstats 📦s: ggdist (mjskay.github.io/ggdist), tidybayes, ggblend, posterior::rvar...

Some examples from the three main families of ggdist geometries: slabinterval, dotsinterval, and lineribbon

An example of an election forecast communicated using a quantile dotplot, from: Yang, Fumeng, Chloe Rose Mortenson, Erik Nisbet, Nicholas Diakopoulos, and Matthew Kay. "In Dice We Trust: Uncertainty Displays for Maintaining Trust in Election Forecasts Over Time." In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-24. 2024.

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Voilà: Francis Gagnon

@chezvoila.com

I've just done the largest update to the #dataviz starter pack, with 30 accounts (20%) replaced. It means it will generate more content now. Might be worth re-clicking.

Sadly, gender imbalance got worse. I saved 5 spots for women-run accounts. Send suggestions, including yourself! Replies or DMs.

September 10, 2026 at 10:58 AM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Jon Harmon (he/him/his)

@jonthegeek.com

I've been feeling pretty down. When I found #RStats, I kinda fell in love, and decided to become as much of an expeRt as I could be. In the age of AI, that's not a good idea; why make the bots program in a language they don't really understand? #dataBS

September 21, 2026 at 12:40 AM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Sunny Moraine

@dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social

There are *humans to be held accountable* here, not mysterious ghosts in an ineffable machine

September 18, 2026 at 6:21 PM

Matthew Kay

@mjskay.com

This is such a great idea! Vis conference paper discussions on bluesky. Great way to push people to reconstitute academic social networks here.

Dominik Moritz @domoritz.de · 5d

We are trying a big experiment this year for @ieeevis.org where we will have paper discussions hosted on @atproto.com. So look out for more activity in November.

September 18, 2026 at 9:42 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Tom Roberts

@tpgroberts.bsky.social

Wonder what their handles are, because they're definitely on here

Usili (Talia) 🏳️‍⚧️ @usili.bsky.social · 3d

I can't believe this got an article in the NYT.

Also dudes rock.

www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/w...

Can Two Friends Complete a Game No One Has Ever Finished?

The Campaign for North Africa, a staggeringly complicated World War II board game, has stymied players for decades. Now two guys in England are giving it a serious go.

www.nytimes.com

September 18, 2026 at 8:56 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Zander Furnas

@alexanderfurnas.com

guys many years ago i read the harry potter fanfic

ama

September 17, 2026 at 9:05 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Xan Gregg

@xangregg.bsky.social

Here's a makeover retry using the same colors. Not entirely happy with the labeling, but interesting to try to mix continuous and categorical nature of the time variable using stacked area and stacked bars. The 80s vs 90s shift is easier to see. #dataviz

Stacked area chart remake of the sequence of pie charts in the parent post. For 4 time points, the chart shows the percent of albums from each decade in the top 500 list.

September 16, 2026 at 12:38 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Voilà: Francis Gagnon

@chezvoila.com

Thanks to @ieeevis.org and anyone else who nudges the dataviz community towards Bluesky. It works!

Tamara Munzner @munzner.bsky.social · 5d

Hiya! Finally motivated to join thanks to @ieeevis.org nudge when registering for IEEE VIS in Boston. Thanks for curating the visualization starter pack to onboard me into something interesting right away.

September 16, 2026 at 1:27 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Colin

@colin-fraser.net

“Every time the AI is supposed to not have access to the open internet and then it gains access to the open internet, you have to pay 10 million dollars”

September 15, 2026 at 4:29 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

G Elliott Morris

@gelliottmorris.com

We have updated our House election forecast with the new old congressional district boundaries in Missouri. fpo.news

September 11, 2026 at 9:26 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Gavin Simpson

@gsimpson.bsky.social

So I did tell the editor where to shove it — politely of course

Dear Professor Bee,

Thank you for your email, and again for the time that you, the handling editor, and the reviewers have devoted to my manuscript, "Method: Using generalized additive models in the livestock animal sciences". I am very grateful for the constructive review of the paper and was pleased that it was accepted for publication in animal – open space.

I have considered the requested changes to remove first-person formulations such as “I show”, “I describe”, and similar expressions. I respectfully disagree with this stylistic requirement and am not willing to revise the manuscript throughout to adopt an impersonal style. The use of first-person, active prose is a deliberate authorial choice, and there is substantial contemporary guidance encouraging clearer, more direct scientific writing of this kind, including Brennan (2024, *PNAS*, doi:10.1073/pnas.2316966121) and guidance from Nature advocating active rather than passive scientific prose (https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/effective-writing-13815989/).

I would therefore be very happy for the manuscript to remain with animal – open space and proceed to publication, subject to normal copy-editing, provided that the requirement to convert first-person formulations throughout the manuscript to an impersonal style is withdrawn.

If the journal considers this stylistic change to be a condition of publication, please treat this email as my formal request that the manuscript not proceed to publication.

As I signed the publishing agreement following acceptance, I would be grateful if, in that event, you could confirm in writing that the manuscript will not be published by animal – open space and that, pursuant to the “Reversion of Rights” provision in the agreement, all rights granted under the exclusive publishing and distribution licence have reverted to me. I would also appreciate confirmation that I am free to submit the manuscript for consideration by another journal.

I regret that we have reach…

September 8, 2026 at 9:21 AM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Senator Chris Van Hollen

@vanhollen.senate.gov

This Labor Day, if you've ever benefited from:

— The weekend
— 40-hour work weeks
— Workplace safety standards
— A minimum wage
— Paid time off

thank a union.

Unions don’t just improve working conditions for their members, they help every American worker.

Happy Labor Day!

September 7, 2026 at 1:43 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

ℳatt

@matttomic.bsky.social

I've seen everyone sharing that US Dialect Quiz so I decided to make my own, much crappier, CANADIAN DIALECT QUIZ to guess where in Canada you're from

A flow chart I have created with multiple questions and the answers determine where you're from.

Question 1 is do you call it a hydro bill (which then branches down to ON, QC, BC, MB) or an electric bill (which then branches down to SK, AB, NS, NB, PEI, NL)

Question 2 is do you call it a cabin (BC, MB, AB, SK) cottage (ON and atlantic) camp (northern Ontario) chalet (QC) or bungalow (Cape Breton)

To delineate BC from MB: do you call it dinner or supper

To delineate southern Ontario rural or big city: have you heard of a stag & doe

To delineate SK from AB: do you call a hoodie a bunnyhug

And finally to delineate NL from the other atlantic provinces: whaddayat? (Correct answer: dis is it b'y)

September 4, 2026 at 3:38 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Tobias Isenberg

@tisenberg.bsky.social

At the BELIV workshop (at @ieeevis.org), we will also present the work of Anne-Flore Cabouat and Lily Ge (with @cybunk.bsky.social, @mjskay.com, @drpi.bsky.social ) on "Why Question Answering Modality Matters in Visualization Studies and Tests". More info: tobias.isenberg.cc/p/Cabouat202...

Tobias Isenberg - Why Question Answering Modality Matters in Visualization Studies and Tests

tobias.isenberg.cc

September 3, 2026 at 7:45 AM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Nyek London

@stupidhoroscope.bsky.social

I honestly think it's the same as billionaire brain disease; when someone else does all your thinking for you and all you get is sycophancy in return, your brain turns to custard.

January 5, 2026 at 6:36 AM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Stephanie Carvin

@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social

Wake up, babe. The Prime Minister just dropped “hydronym”.

The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.

The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms.

Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.

August 27, 2026 at 9:39 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Aki Vehtari

@avehtari.bsky.social

bayesplot R package 1.16.0 now in CRAN!

This release has quite a lot of new functionality and other improvements. Below are some highlights. For more detailed release notes that cover additional improvements and bug fixes see Changelog mc-stan.org/bayesplot/ne...

Changelog

mc-stan.org

August 26, 2026 at 9:26 AM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Stats For Bios

@statsforbios.bsky.social

Reread my blog post on the biggest problem in statistics. On re-read, I still don't think it is terrible (other than the typos and things). So I'll repost. timcdlucas.github.io/the-biggest-...

The Biggest Problem In Statistics

timcdlucas.github.io

August 25, 2026 at 3:13 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Aki Vehtari

@avehtari.bsky.social

Given all the discussions about Laplace and Jacobians at StanCon, reminder also about my case study with simple visual illustrations users.aalto.fi/~ave/casestu...

August 21, 2026 at 2:18 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Sean Pinkney

@spinkney.bsky.social

Stancon26 talk about a surprising discovery I had that Bayesian hierarchical models can be made equivalent in distribution to frequentist estimates, giving new insight into hierarchical models and faster inference. Upcoming paper with Nikolai Vetr

youtu.be/lHXav9KIEIU?...

Sean Pinkney - Population Effects in Hierarchical Models using Sum-to-Zero Constraints. StanCon 2026

YouTube video by Stan

youtu.be

August 20, 2026 at 10:04 AM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Rob Hyndman

@robjhyndman.com

We're hiring in statistics, econometrics, ML, statistical computing, data vis, etc. It's a great place to work, which is why I've been here for more than 30 years! Details at bit.ly/3Tld8UV. Level is roughly equivalent to Assistant/Associate Prof in North America. #stats #datascience #rstats

Job Search

careers.pageuppeople.com

July 29, 2026 at 12:12 AM

Matthew Kay

@mjskay.com

Given all the discussions about Jacobians at #StanCon today, the @mc-stan.org audience would appreciate that {ggdist} automatically applies the Jacobian adjustment when visualizing densities on transformed scales -- I should have demoed it in my talk!

Sometimes useful when looking at priors...

A lognormal distribution on the original scale and then on a log scale, showing how its shape is transformed (and is Normal on the log scale).

A normal distribution on the original scale and then on an inverse-logit scale, showing how its shape is transformed.

August 20, 2026 at 9:36 PM

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Stevie Chancellor

@schancellor.bsky.social

I'm missing OG Twitter and the academic conversations. LinkedIn kind of sucks for that, and Substack Notes are mostly talking to other writers, not to professors.

Where do I go to hang out with my friends between conferences? Is it here?? Where is my 2026 equivalent where I post AIM away messages?

August 20, 2026 at 12:34 PM