It’s Christmas so what better time to write about Charles Dickens . . . Here’s the story: In traditional survey research we have been spoiled. If you work with atomistic data structures, a small sample looks like a little bit of the population. But a small sample of a network doesn’t look like the whole. […] The post Christmas special: Survey research, network sampling, and Charles Dickens’ coincidences appeared first…
Most of the time when I start writing a blog post, I continue till its finished. As of this writing this blog has 7128 posts published, 137 scheduled, and only 434 unpublished drafts sitting in the folder. 434 might sound like a lot, but we’ve been blogging for over 10 years, and a bunch of […] The post Unfinished (so far) draft blog posts appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal…
Yesterday all the past. The language of effect size Spreading to Psychology along the sub-fields; the diffusion Of the counting-frame and the quincunx; Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the ivy climates. Yesterday the assessment of hypotheses by tests, The divination of water; yesterday the invention Of cartwheels and clocks, the power-pose of Horses. Yesterday the bustling […] The post Spin appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
I was reading Cowboys Full, James McManus’s entertaining history of poker (but way too much on the so-called World Series of Poker), and I skimmed the index to look up some of my favorite poker writers. Frank Wallace and David Spanier were both there but only got brief mentions in the text, I was disappointed […] The post Some people are so easy to contact and some people aren’t. appeared…
It’s been D. J. Taylor week here. I expect that something like 0% of you (rounding to the nearest percentage point) have heard of D. J. Taylor, and that’s ok. He’s an English literary critic. Several years ago I picked up a copy of his book, A Vain Conceit: British Fiction in the 1980s, and […] The post “The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918” and “The Windsor…
I sometimes pick up various old collections that will be suitable for bathroom reading, and so it was that the other day I was sitting on the throne reading the summer 1985 issue of Granta, entitled Science. Lots of great stuff here, including Oliver Sacks on Tourette’s syndrome, Thomas McMahan on Alexander Graham Bell, and […] The post Genius is not enough: The sad story of Peter Hagelstein, living monument…
The first of the breed was Bill James. But now we have a bunch: Felix Salmon, Nate Silver, Amanda Cox, Carl Bialik, . . . . I put them in a different category than traditional science journalists such as Malcolm Gladwell, Gina Kolata, Stephen Dubner who are invested in the “scientist as hero” story, or […] The post The new quantitative journalism appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and…
I got a book in the mail attached to some publicity material that began: Over the last several years, a different kind of science book has found a home on consumer bookshelves. Anchored by meticulous research and impeccable credentials, these books bring hard science to bear on the daily lives of the lay reader; their […] The post Letters we never finished reading appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference,…
Allan Dafoe writes: I just came across this article about academic urban legends spreading because of sloppy citation practices. I found it fascinating and relevant to the conversations on your blog. The article is by Ole Bjørn Rekdal and it is indeed fascinating. It begins as follows: Many of the messages presented in respectable scientific […] The post How an academic urban legend can spread because of the difficulty of…
Norman Ornstein and Alan Abramowitz warn against over-interpreting poll fluctuations: In this highly charged election, it’s no surprise that the news media see every poll like an addict sees a new fix. That is especially true of polls that show large and unexpected changes. Those polls get intense coverage and analysis, adding to their presumed […] The post “Stop the Polling Insanity” appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and…
