Spring 2021 Update Schedule

To reflect the 2021 syllabus changes, the lessons below are being added / changed. The current plan is to have all of these changes done by the end of March, I’m sorry that that isn’t farther from the exam date.

A.3.5 has been removed (Normal-Normal conjugate priors are no longer on the syllabus).

I’ve added a new lesson B.1.0 introducing LMM with an intercept only example. This isn’t related to syllabus changes; the goal is to help clarify why we use random effects as that is something a lot of people ask about.

C.2.5: Multicollinearity is no longer on the reading list and this lesson will be shortened. Target date 3/19

C.2.9 and C.2.10: Probably 2 new lessons will be added to include material on splines, cross-validation, and prior distribution simulations. Target date 3/26

C.3.2: The 2nd edition of Statistical Rethinking adds an example related to shortcomings of Metropolis-Hastings and Gibbs Sampling. Three slides of the lesson (including the exercise) will be updated to reflect this. Target date: 3/13

C.3.5: New lesson on trace rank plots. This is the first fully new lesson to be added as I expect at least one question related to this to appear on the exam this sitting. Target date: 3/13

C.4.1: Edits to reduce the emphasis on general link functions as it seems that only log link (for Poisson) and logit link functions (for binomial) are still on syllabus. Target date: 3/19

C.5.5: New lesson on using uncentered priors to get better convergence of chains. Target date: 3/31.

Join the Conversation

8 Comments

  1. New Lesson B1.0 introducing LMM with an intercept only example is not posted yet. Are we supposed to be able to see that already?

    1. Yes. C.2.10 is taking a while because the material is fairly subjective and I’m struggling with trying to identify what is testable. I think I have some ideas, should be able to write it today and post it Wednesday.

  2. Can you please provide an update on this? I’m seeing in the New/Updated it says 4 but when I click it it only shows 2, and when I click through the lessons myself I only see 3. Also, is there a plan to update the C study sheet with the additional modules added according to this post? Thanks.

    1. Everything has been added and / or updated, but I agree that the new / updated tab isn’t working right. It seems to be working better for the updated lessons than the new lessons, so I’m considering `updating’ the new lessons so they get displayed better.

      Yes, there will be an updated formula sheet and flashcards.

  3. You mention splines above in the 2.9/2.10 videos, but I do not see splines on the syllabus or in the videos that you created. Could you confirm that splines will not be on the exam? Thanks!

    1. After re-reading the text, I couldn’t find anything I felt was very testable on splines. He describes them in words, but not in enough detail to do an actual computational problem, and he goes through examples of how to code them in R, and the syllabus is explicit that you don’t have to be able to write R code.

      I’m thinking about adding some problems that nominally involve splines, but only in a superficial way. E.g., write down a spline model and ask what happens to the effective number of parameters if you reduce the SD on the priors. It will go down because that’s what happens with anything if you reduce the SD on the priors.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *