I need to test a hypothesis by using brms. I am not very familiar with this package, but would like to learn. I wonder if someone is available for a private tutorial session?
Please email me (selma.coecke@gmail.com) if you are interested.
Many thanks
Any possibility of making a post with a list of possible tutors who would be interested? I think it could help many on here!
I would also be extremely keen for the possibility of having a private tutorial session where I could ask questions about using stan / brms .
@jonah I wonder if the SGB could facilitate this kind of thing? Maybe set up a registry of experienced users (and their areas of expertise) who are open to being contacted for contract work or tutoring?
Although I suppose it would have to be with the qualification that the SGB/Stan doesn’t endorse/guarantee the skills or work of the individuals involved, otherwise that could open a larger can of worms
Yeah I like that idea. I’ll add this to the SGB’s agenda to discuss at our next meeting. Maybe the simplest option is to start a category on the forums (or use the existing “jobs” category) and encourage anyone interested to post a list of topics they are comfortable tutoring or consulting on.
Many thanks!
My background is cognitive science. Hypothesis testing is such an important part in most studies in this field. I am sure that more people will demand these tutorials, once a few more papers are out.
I hope to learn this method and use it soon.
All the best.
@martinmodrak What do you think about using the forum for this?
I think there are two things to consider separately:
I think that for 2) the Jobs category is probably OK. I don’t think requests/offers for paid consulting are likely to have high volume and thus wouldn’t think too much about regulating those - we can do this if the need arises.
Discussing 1) is harder: I can definitely see how a private consulting can benefit users and the community and I have done some free private consulting on a few ocasions when I liked the project or wanted to support somebody from a less represented demographic in the community. On the other hand, there are also big benefits of having those discussion in the open (e.g. here on the forums) where others can find them and learn from them. We also don’t want to set expectations that the community can routinely provide free private consulting (that’s IMHO something that should be primarily paid work). So I would hesitate a bit before giving any strong official support to people seeking this option. Especially if it could interpreted as an (informal) commitment of some users to do free work.
For people that are too shy to post on a public and archived forum we also have the Mc-stan community slack which recently became a bit more active, so that’s sort of a middle ground between the forums and full private consulting.
For this particular topic I’ve also recently wrote down some of my thouhts based on advice I’ve given and seen given in this context: Hypothesis testing, model selection, model comparison - some thoughts . But I was reminded that those things are hard and there currently isn’t a strong consensus in the Stan community on how to approach these questions. Which is probably good to bear in mind.
Happy to hear other people’s thoughts on this.
One more thing: the previous post was possibly too negative. To be a bit more positive one thing I believe we could have more on the forums is people seeking full-fledged collaborators on academic projects. I think trying to find someone to help you with your project, become a co-author and - within this role - mentor you to be able to do stuff yourself the next time around changes the dynamic in an important way… Obviously I don’t want to pressure people into inviting active forum users to co-author their work, I just think that in the context of private mentoring co-authorship is the least academics can offer in return.
So that’s another one of my thoughts - which don’t necessarily have to represent the community, it’s really just my thoughts :-)
That sounds like a good idea.