METHODS · 15 modules
Statistical workflow
Sample · Frame · Regress · Test · Boot · Lag · Code · Tab · Strata · Cohort · Factor · Seed · Tape · Gauge · Quantity.
A suite of twenty-eight open-source modules across five plugins that turns the modular synthesizer's patch cables into a live, manipulable surface for statistics, data science, and computational social science. Every parameter is a knob; every intermediate estimator is a control-voltage signal; every module ships with a real-time visualization matched to the statistic it computes.
Statistics education has been urged for two decades to center on simulation-based reasoning rather than closed-form normal-theory derivation, but the dominant computational vehicles — R scripts, Python notebooks, single-purpose web applets — still hide the data-generating process and the inferential apparatus behind opaque function calls.
Empiria takes the opposite approach. It exposes the entire empirical workflow as patch cables on a rack: parametric sampling → sample-window estimation → online OLS regression → exact t-tests → BCa bootstrap → autocorrelation diagnostics → deterministic record-and-replay → CSV export.
The patch is the curriculum. The wires drawn between modules externalize the inferential logic of a lesson in a way no static diagram can — and because every random draw is Mersenne-Twister-seeded and every closed-form quantity is computed by the standard numerical recipe (Lentz CF for the incomplete beta, BCa for the bootstrap, Sanger's rule for online PCA), the same patch is also a reproducible analog computer.
Each plugin is its own family of modules sharing a colored family-stripe under the header strip.
Sample · Frame · Regress · Test · Boot · Lag · Code · Tab · Strata · Cohort · Factor · Seed · Tape · Gauge · Quantity.
Cascade · Discourse · Pareto · Dilemma · Diffusion · Network. Granovetter cascades, opinion dynamics, wealth condensation, iterated dilemmas, small-world / scale-free networks.
Outbreak — SIR-style epidemic spread on Watts-Strogatz, Erdős-Rényi, and Barabási-Albert graphs. "Flatten the curve" is one patch cable away.
Life · Schelling · Turing. Conway's Game of Life with rule presets, Schelling segregation on a 24 × 24 grid, Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion traversing spots, stripes, labyrinths.
Prospect · Bandit · DDM. Kahneman-Tversky prospect theory, K-armed bandits with ε-greedy / UCB1 / Thompson sampling, Ratcliff drift-diffusion.
Every random module wraps std::mt19937 with an explicit, on-panel integer seed. Same seed produces byte-identical results on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Two-tailed t uses Lentz continued fractions for the incomplete beta. χ² uses regularized incomplete gamma. Bootstrap CIs are bias-corrected and accelerated (Efron 1987) with on-panel z₀ and â diagnostics.
.vcv patches are plain JSON. Tape's right-click Export buffer to CSV bridges Empiria into R / Python / Julia. The patch is a citeable scientific artifact.
Grab the latest .vcvplugin archives from GitHub releases.
github.com/kevisc/empiria/releases →Move the archive into Rack's plugin folder; restart Rack. Modules appear under the SHLabs brand.
Full manual (PDF) →If you use Empiria in published research or coursework, please cite the companion paper.
@article{empiria2026,
author = {Schoenholzer, Kevin},
title = {Empiria: A Modular-Synthesizer Platform for
Simulation-Based Statistics Education},
journal = {Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education},
year = {2026},
note = {under review}
}Empiria has no paid tier and no commercial sponsor. If it has saved you time, made your teaching land, or just made statistics legible to a student who needed it, consider supporting future development.
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