The Linguistics Research Unit of the Institute of Language and Communication (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium) will be hosting Stefan Gries’s next bootcamp on statistics for linguistics with R from 13 to 17 July 2026. The ‘Statistics for linguistics with R’ bootcamp is a hands-on introduction to statistical methods for both graduate students and seasoned researchers and is loosely based on the third edition (2021) of Gries’s textbook Statistics for linguistics with R. The course is intended for linguists who already have a basic knowledge in statistics and some experience using R and who wish to improve their proficiency in statistical modeling of linguistic data. Using the open source software and programming language R, we will deal with:
• fundamental aspects of fixed effects regression modeling for both numeric and binary response variables; these include exploration of data and their preparation for modeling, model formulation and selection; numerical and visual interpretation and evaluation of models;
• more advanced aspects of fixed-effects regression modeling such as contrasts for ordinal predictors, orthogonal contrasts, curvature of numeric predictors, and maybe general linear hypothesis tests;
• the theoretical foundations of mixed-effects regression modeling;
• applications of mixed-effects modeling for both numeric and binary response variables;
• tree-based methods and random forests: 'fitting' and interpreting them with importance scores, partial dependence scores, and detecting (not just capturing) interactions. For more info about the bootcamp, see https://www.uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ilc/cecl/rling2026 . Online registration will start on 2nd March 2026, 1pm CEST. The number of participants is limited. If you would like to participate, mark the date in your diary! Contact email: magali.paquot@uclouvain.bemailto:magali.paquot@uclouvain.be Magali Paquot Convenor