Category Archives: Uncategorized

I used ChatGPT for work for real for the first time today

I had tried it before… once asking it to write R code for a non-standardtask involving date objects (I wasn’t able to frame the problem well enough forit to give me something useful); once, facing some legacy teaching materials inneed of major revision, asking it to write a fresh introduction to the activity(it did great,Continue reading “I used ChatGPT for work for real for the first time today”

`annotate` is crisp; `geom_text` is blurry

I just bumped into a little issue in ggplot2 that makes sense, but I was surprised. It looks like there are two things going on, one of which is a very basic thing about how ggplot2 adds geom‘s, but the other is about how various plotting devices deal with overlapping data. As recognized a decadeContinue reading “`annotate` is crisp; `geom_text` is blurry”

Rarefaction and extrapolation

Background This is a guest post written by Joseph Mack This post, written by Joseph Mack, explores the working of the unified interpolation/extrapolation tools described in Colwell et al. 2012 Journal of Plant Ecology “Models and estimators linking individual-based and sample-based rarefaction, extrapolation and comparison of assemblages” doi: 10.1093/jpe/rtr044. Joseph shared this tutorial with theContinue reading “Rarefaction and extrapolation”

Scale-dependent biodiversity patterns

Guest Post from Connor Whitaker I’m a student in a graduate-level discussion-based seminar that Michael is teaching: “Frontiers in Biodiversity Measurement.” As part of the course, we are expected to “take point” on one paper during the semester, lead the discussion, and craft a tutorial in R. We were given a lot of creative libertyContinue reading “Scale-dependent biodiversity patterns”

Seesaw plots illustrate “mean rarity”

When I took a course on group theory, my clever classmates would read the textbook, and a new abstract concept was theirs… they could fill in the examples of the groups themselves, and come up with new examples. I usually couldn’t do this. In order to generalize, first I had to work through all theContinue reading “Seesaw plots illustrate “mean rarity””