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A new survey reveals the MLB's most foul-mouthed fanbase
Sherrone Moore accuser Paige Shiver speaks out in new interview: he'had complete control over me' Megan Rapinoe calls on traditional WNBA media to be replaced with those who'understand queer culture' The NFL Draft continues to be one of the worst'sporting events' of the year New Russini-Vrabel photos raise ESPN conflict questions but the network won't answer them ESPN's Mad Dog Russo melts down over'U-S-A' chants at the RBC Heritage A piece of the UFC White House event's setup is sitting in Pennsylvania Amish country Viral Ottawa Senators fan blamed for team's 0-2 playoff start banished to Taiwan'First Take' host acts disgusted when she has to cover Vrabel-Russini drama Gen Jack Keane: You can't believe anything Iran says until it executes Will Cain: Everything about Hasan Piker is'communism wrapped in a Che Guevara T-shirt' Trump: 'Can I finish my question, wise guy?' DHS attorney speaks out after UCLA protest chaos and claims he received'death threats' Trump: Why would I use a nuclear weapon? A Vegas Insider study combed through all 30 MLB teams' subreddits to find which fanbases swear the most online When you start thinking about which MLB teams' fanbases have the filthiest mouths, there's a good chance a few cities instantly jump to mind. But a new survey from Vegas Insider has found the most foul-mouthed fanbases in the MLB, and the top team might surprise you a little at first... and then it will make total sense. A new survey has found that Athletics fans are the most foul-mouthed in Major League Baseball. Technically, a franchise that played in Philadelphia at one point, but is now in Sacramento limbonow in Sacramento limbo ahead of a move to Vegas: the Athletics.
CLT-Optimal Parameter Error Bounds for Linear System Identification
There has been remarkable progress over the past decade in establishing finite-sample, non-asymptotic bounds on recovering unknown system parameters from observed system behavior. Surprisingly, however, we show that the current state-of-the-art bounds do not accurately capture the statistical complexity of system identification, even in the most fundamental setting of estimating a discrete-time linear dynamical system (LDS) via ordinary least-squares regression (OLS). Specifically, we utilize asymptotic normality to identify classes of problem instances for which current bounds overstate the squared parameter error, in both spectral and Frobenius norm, by a factor of the state-dimension of the system. Informed by this discrepancy, we then sharpen the OLS parameter error bounds via a novel second-order decomposition of the parameter error, where crucially the lower-order term is a matrix-valued martingale that we show correctly captures the CLT scaling. From our analysis we obtain finite-sample bounds for both (i) stable systems and (ii) the many-trajectories setting that match the instance-specific optimal rates up to constant factors in Frobenius norm, and polylogarithmic state-dimension factors in spectral norm.
The Sample Complexity of Multicalibration
Collina, Natalie, Lu, Jiuyao, Noarov, Georgy, Roth, Aaron
We study the minimax sample complexity of multicalibration in the batch setting. A learner observes $n$ i.i.d. samples from an unknown distribution and must output a (possibly randomized) predictor whose population multicalibration error, measured by Expected Calibration Error (ECE), is at most $\varepsilon$ with respect to a given family of groups. For every fixed $κ> 0$, in the regime $|G|\le \varepsilon^{-κ}$, we prove that $\widetildeΘ(\varepsilon^{-3})$ samples are necessary and sufficient, up to polylogarithmic factors. The lower bound holds even for randomized predictors, and the upper bound is realized by a randomized predictor obtained via an online-to-batch reduction. This separates the sample complexity of multicalibration from that of marginal calibration, which scales as $\widetildeΘ(\varepsilon^{-2})$, and shows that mean-ECE multicalibration is as difficult in the batch setting as it is in the online setting, in contrast to marginal calibration which is strictly more difficult in the online setting. In contrast we observe that for $κ= 0$, the sample complexity of multicalibration remains $\widetildeΘ(\varepsilon^{-2})$ exhibiting a sharp threshold phenomenon. More generally, we establish matching upper and lower bounds, up to polylogarithmic factors, for a weighted $L_p$ multicalibration metric for all $1 \le p \le 2$, with optimal exponent $3/p$. We also extend the lower-bound template to a regular class of elicitable properties, and combine it with the online upper bounds of Hu et al. (2025) to obtain matching bounds for calibrating properties including expectiles and bounded-density quantiles.
Revealing Geography-Driven Signals in Zone-Level Claim Frequency Models: An Empirical Study using Environmental and Visual Predictors
Alfonso-Sánchez, Sherly, Bravo, Cristián, Stankova, Kristina G.
Geographic context is often consider relevant to motor insurance risk, yet public actuarial datasets provide limited location identifiers, constraining how this information can be incorporated and evaluated in claim-frequency models. This study examines how geographic information from alternative data sources can be incorporated into actuarial models for Motor Third Party Liability (MTPL) claim prediction under such constraints. Using the BeMTPL97 dataset, we adopt a zone-level modeling framework and evaluate predictive performance on unseen postcodes. Geographic information is introduced through two channels: environmental indicators from OpenStreetMap and CORINE Land Cover, and orthoimagery released by the Belgian National Geographic Institute for academic use. We evaluate the predictive contribution of coordinates, environmental features, and image embeddings across three baseline models: generalized linear models (GLMs), regularized GLMs, and gradient-boosted trees, while raw imagery is modeled using convolutional neural networks. Our results show that augmenting actuarial variables with constructed geographic information improves accuracy. Across experiments, both linear and tree-based models benefit most from combining coordinates with environmental features extracted at 5 km scale, while smaller neighborhoods also improve baseline specifications. Generally, image embeddings do not improve performance when environmental features are available; however, when such features are absent, pretrained vision-transformer embeddings enhance accuracy and stability for regularized GLMs. Our results show that the predictive value of geographic information in zone-level MTPL frequency models depends less on model complexity than on how geography is represented, and illustrate that geographic context can be incorporated despite limited individual-level spatial information.
Quotient-Space Diffusion Models
Xu, Yixian, Wang, Yusong, Luo, Shengjie, Gao, Kaiyuan, He, Tianyu, He, Di, Liu, Chang
Diffusion-based generative models have reformed generative AI, and have enabled new capabilities in the science domain, for example, generating 3D structures of molecules. Due to the intrinsic problem structure of certain tasks, there is often a symmetry in the system, which identifies objects that can be converted by a group action as equivalent, hence the target distribution is essentially defined on the quotient space with respect to the group. In this work, we establish a formal framework for diffusion modeling on a general quotient space, and apply it to molecular structure generation which follows the special Euclidean group $\text{SE}(3)$ symmetry. The framework reduces the necessity of learning the component corresponding to the group action, hence simplifies learning difficulty over conventional group-equivariant diffusion models, and the sampler guarantees recovering the target distribution, while heuristic alignment strategies lack proper samplers. The arguments are empirically validated on structure generation for small molecules and proteins, indicating that the principled quotient-space diffusion model provides a new framework that outperforms previous symmetry treatments.
Even More Guarantees for Variational Inference in the Presence of Symmetries
Zellinger, Lena, Vergari, Antonio
When approximating an intractable density via variational inference (VI) the variational family is typically chosen as a simple parametric family that very likely does not contain the target. This raises the question: Under which conditions can we recover characteristics of the target despite misspecification? In this work, we extend previous results on robust VI with location-scale families under target symmetries. We derive sufficient conditions guaranteeing exact recovery of the mean when using the forward Kullback-Leibler divergence and $α$-divergences. We further show how and why optimization can fail to recover the target mean in the absence of our sufficient conditions, providing initial guidelines on the choice of the variational family and $α$-value.
Calibeating Prediction-Powered Inference
van der Laan, Lars, Van Der Laan, Mark
We study semisupervised mean estimation with a small labeled sample, a large unlabeled sample, and a black-box prediction model whose output may be miscalibrated. A standard approach in this setting is augmented inverse-probability weighting (AIPW) [Robins et al., 1994], which protects against prediction-model misspecification but can be inefficient when the prediction score is poorly aligned with the outcome scale. We introduce Calibrated Prediction-Powered Inference, which post-hoc calibrates the prediction score on the labeled sample before using it for semisupervised estimation. This simple step requires no retraining and can improve the original score both as a predictor of the outcome and as a regression adjustment for semisupervised inference. We study both linear and isotonic calibration. For isotonic calibration, we establish first-order optimality guarantees: isotonic post-processing can improve predictive accuracy and estimator efficiency relative to the original score and simpler post-processing rules, while no further post-processing of the fitted isotonic score yields additional first-order gains. For linear calibration, we show first-order equivalence to PPI++. We also clarify the relationship among existing estimators, showing that the original PPI estimator is a special case of AIPW and can be inefficient when the prediction model is accurate, while PPI++ is AIPW with empirical efficiency maximization [Rubin et al., 2008]. In simulations and real-data experiments, our calibrated estimators often outperform PPI and are competitive with, or outperform, AIPW and PPI++. We provide an accompanying Python package, ppi_aipw, at https://larsvanderlaan.github.io/ppi-aipw/.
65-foot-long octopuses ruled ancient oceans
The kraken-like apex predators were smart, too. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. The fossils prove octopuses existed at least 5 million years earlier than originally thought. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Around 100 million years ago, real kraken-like creatures stalked Earth's prehistoric oceans.
Forget the experts: These are your winning 2026 NFL Draft bets
New Russini-Vrabel photos raise ESPN conflict questions but the network won't answer them ESPN's Mad Dog Russo melts down over'U-S-A' chants at the RBC Heritage A piece of the UFC White House event's setup is sitting in Pennsylvania Amish country Viral Ottawa Senators fan blamed for team's 0-2 playoff start banished to Taiwan'First Take' host acts disgusted when she has to cover Vrabel-Russini drama Edward Cabrera's strikeout prop is the play as struggling Phillies face surging Cubs today Nuggets vs Timberwolves Game 3 pick hinges on Jaden McDaniels calling out Denver's entire defense Charles Barkley was disgusted by Magic's highly questionable pregame handshake ChatGPT predicted the first round of the NFL Draft and here's what it said California governor's race intensifies as six candidates face off Trump: US Navy to'shoot and kill' any boat placing mines in Hormuz Virginia court blocks Democrats' redistricting effort, Florida next Trump weighs in on Iran's internal power struggle and Strait of Hormuz control Hasan Piker justifies'social murder' of CEO Fox News celebrates'Bring Your Kids to Work Day' OutKick's own Armando Salguero gives his analysis on the latest surrounding the 2026 NFL Draft. I pride myself on getting it in good in sports betting, which is poker slang for making a plus-expected value bet before all the cards are dealt. Well, it's getting harder and harder to do that in the 2026 Whether it be the NFL executives telling teams to keep their draft boards more private because we can now legally gamble on this stuff, or the sportsbooks are just putting up sharper numbers. Either way, it's tough for schnooks like me to profit off the NFL draft nowadays. TRAVIS HUNTER'S WIFE LEANNA LENEE HAS A WARNING FOR WAGS HEADING INTO THE 2026 NFL DRAFT Nevertheless, I'm targeting a few angles that blend team need, market value, and draft buzz.