Rate My Professor Robin Ryder

Ryder's research focuses on Bayesian computational statistics, with emphasis on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) methods. His academic interests extend to applications in the humanities, including phylolinguistics, stochastic models for historical linguistics, and statistics for animal communication in non-human primates. Key publications include 'Approximate Bayesian Computational methods' (2012, Statistics and Computing, with Marin, Pudlo, and Robert), 'Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan' (2019, PNAS, with Sagart et al.), 'Computational phylogenetics reveal histories of sign languages' (2024, Science, with Abner et al.), and 'Second-order Zipf’s Law for Word Co-occurrences' (2025, Open Mind, with Guerin, Steinert-Threlkeld, and Chemla). He has been awarded the Corcoran Medal for the best DPhil in Statistics at Oxford (2012) and an honorable mention for the Savage Award by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (2010). Ryder is Chair-elect of the Bayesian Social Sciences section at ISBA, contributing to the advancement of Bayesian methods in social sciences and linguistics.