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Social Science

A collection of 115 issues

Measuring Segregation

Dissimilarity index is a measure of segregation. It runs as follows: where: is population of in the ith area is population of in the larger area from which dissimilarity is being measured against The measure suffers from a couple of issues: 1. Concerns about lumpiness. Even in a small area,

31 Aug 2017 2 min read

How Do We Know?

How can fallible creatures like us know something? The scientific method is about answering that question well. To answer the question well, we have made at least three big innovations: 1. Empiricism. But no privileged observer. What you observe should be reproducible by all others. 2. Open to criticism: If

16 Aug 2017 1 min read

The Innumerate American

In answering a question, scientists sometimes collect data that answers a different, sometimes yet more important question. And when that happens, scientists sometimes overlook the easter egg. This recently happened to me, or so I think. Kabir and I recently investigated the extent to which estimates of motivated factual learning

18 Feb 2017 2 min read

Motivated Citations

The best insights are “duh” insights—patterns hiding in plain sight. One such pattern in academic writing is asymmetric scrutiny: authors apply looser standards to congenial work (evidence that supports their thesis) than to uncongenial work. The result is an echo-system in which citations signal alignment more than reliability, slowing

13 Jan 2017 1 min read

(Numb)ers

Limited Time Only Lifespan ~ 80 years*52 weeks/year ~ 4k weeks If you are 40, 2k weeks to go. If you are 70, another 500 weeks. Well-read If you read a book a week for 50 years, you will read ~ 2500 books. Approximately 130M books have been published. Poor In

07 Jan 2017 1 min read

Rasmussen vs. the Rest

For the data and scripts used to generate the graphs, see https://github.com/soodoku/pollbias.

12 Oct 2016 1 min read

Town Level Data on Cable Operators and Cable Channels

I am pleased to announce the release of TV and Cable Factbook Data (1997–2002; 1998 coverage is modest). Use of the data is restricted to research purposes. Background In 2007, Stefano DellaVigna and Ethan Kaplan published a paper that used data from Warren’s Factbook to identify the effect

12 Sep 2016 2 min read

Teaching Social Science

Three goals: impart information, spur deeper thinking about the topic and the social world more generally, and inculcate care in thinking. As is perhaps clear, working toward achieving any one of these goals creates positive externalities that help achieve other goals. For instance, care in exposition, which is a necessary

12 Sep 2016 1 min read

The Value of Money: Learning from Experiments Offering Money for Correct Answers

Papers at hand: Prior et al. and Bullock et al. Two empirical points that we learn from the papers: 1. Partisan gaps are highly variable, and the mean gap is reasonably small (without money, control condition). See also: Partisan Retrospection? (and updated on 3/2025, A Gap in Our Understanding)

10 Jul 2016 2 min read

Ipso Facto: Analysis of Complaints to IPSO

Independent Press Standards Agency (IPSO) handles complaints about accuracy, etc., in the media in the U.K. Against which media organization are most complaints filed? And against which organization are the complaints most often upheld? We answer these questions using data from the IPSO website. (The data and scripts behind

11 Jun 2016 1 min read

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