Stan short course in July

Jonah Gabry is teaching a Stan short course! He’s done it before and I’ve heard that it’s excellent. Here’s the information:

Dates: Wed Jul 14 – Fri Jul 16
Location: online

Learn Bayesian Data Analysis and Stan with Stan Developer Jonah Gabry

The course consists of three main themes: Bayesian inference and computation; the Stan modeling language; applied statistics/Bayesian data analysis in practice. There will be some lectures to cover important concepts, but the course will also be heavily interactive, with much of the time dedicated to hands-on examples. We will be interfacing with Stan from R, but users of Python and other languages/platforms can still benefit from the course as all of the code we write in the Stan language (and all of the modeling techniques and concepts covered in the course) can be used with any of the Stan interfaces.

7 thoughts on “Stan short course in July

    • Shravan:

      Yes, it’s expensive. For some people it’s worth it, as they’re working in an environment where better statistical modeling and analysis can make a difference right away in their work. Other people don’t have the available cash, and for them I’d recommend using all the free resources available on the web, such as BDA3, Aki Vehtari’s lectures, Richard McElreath’s lectures, etc., as well as Stan itself and its documentation. I’m guessing that many of the people taking this course have already made use of lots of this free material and have specific ways they want to improve. Others will know about the availability of this material but need a boost to get started.

    • We’re not involved in setting the prices, but I think the idea is that this is a class that an employer or research funds would pay for, not something to pay for out of one’s own pocket. Like Andrew said, a lot of what we do is free, but occasionally we do these more intensive and expensive courses, which then makes it easier to do so much other stuff for free. For this class we also have three instructors in order to be able to give all participants more individual attention, plus we have guest appearances from Andrew and other Stan developers, so it’s a bigger production than the cheaper or free workshops that we do.

      • Sure, sure, I am a well-funded German researcher, I can easily bill such a course’s fee to my annual budget or a project. Probably a lot of needy students can’t. I would suggest putting up the video lectures online at some point in the future. That way you also get wider exposure, multiplicator effects.

        • > Probably a lot of needy students can’t.

          Yup, that’s why we do so much for free too! This particular class isn’t really intended for graduate students (although they are of course welcome!) but rather for employees of academic institutions (professors, researchers, etc.) or people at companies that have a budget for trainings.

          > I would suggest putting up the video lectures online at some point in the future.

          We do have free videos online from courses at Stan conferences and other events (taught by me and other people) that cover similar material.

  1. Just to echo: lots of the $ from this course goes to Jonah, and this allows him to develop improvements to cmdstanr, rstanarm, bayesplot, and all sorts of other free goodies.

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