From three years ago: The flip side of this was in 2008, when 84-year-old Frank Lautenberg ran for reelection in New Jersey. That was a Democratic year when the Democrats might’ve done well with just about anybody. (Or maybe not; I don’t really follow New Jersey politics and am just extrapolating from national polls.) When […]
Andrew Gelman
Andrew Gelman is a professor of statistics and political science and director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University.
Posted inPolitics
What Those Bicep Size and Political Attitudes Papers Are Really About
I was thinking some more about those two recent studies (see here and here) published in Psychological Science, “the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology.” Just to relive these for a moment, the papers are: “The Ancestral Logic of Politics: Upper-Body Strength Regulates Men’s Assertion of Self-Interest Over Economic Redistribution”: 3 surveys, two of which […]
Posted inPolitics
Sympathy for the Kinsley
Paul Krugman, Daniel Drezner, and others slam fabled contrarian Michael Kinsley for his argument that we need to cut the budget deficit now because “we have to pay a price for past sins, and the longer we put it off, the higher the price will be” and that this attitude follows “the lessons of Paul […]
Posted inPolitics
There’s No Pure Economics Unpolluted by Politics
I agree with almost everything Dan Kahan writes here, where he discusses how people’s attitudes about global warming could be changed by looking at the financial decisions of businesses: Market actors are economically, not ideologically motivated. Moreover, cognitive biases are likely to cancel out, leaving only the signal associated with informed assessments, by multiple rational […]
Posted inPolitics
The Relevance of Statisticians to Researchers in Different fields of Social Science
Someone pointed me to a remark someone who felt that statisticians were not doing their job to help out “mathematically challenged” psychology researchers. My first thought was that statisticians often help in an indirect way, by developing advanced methods that quantitative psychologists then translate to their colleagues, but I also realized that there was some […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Understanding Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is a history professor who also gives paid lectures, including a notorious recent event where he made an offhand commend dissing John Maynard Keynes for being gay, marrying a ballerina, and talking about poetry. Ferguson later characterized his own remarks as “stupid.” I blogged a bit about this already, but I just wanted […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Free Expression vs. Not Wanting to Make Anyone Personally Uncomfortable
From a video conversation between UC Berkeley’s next chancellor, Nicholas Dirks, and Dan Mogulof of Berkeley’s Office of Public Affairs: I don’t support divestment with respect to Israel. At the same time, many of my colleagues felt very strongly about this and many of them signed a petition, and it circulated widely at the time, […]
Posted inPolitics
According to David Brooks, Staying Out of Jail Is a Conservative Value
The New York Times columnist writes: First, immigration opponents are effectively trying to restrict the flow of conservatives into this country. In survey after survey, immigrants are found to have more traditional ideas about family structure and community than comparable Americans. They have lower incarceration rates. They place higher emphasis on career success. They have […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Like Casper the ghost, Niall Ferguson is not only white. He is also very, very adorable.
I don’t want this to be a regular feature but I wanted to briefly comment on Ferguson’s open letter regarding the Keynes-was-a-ballet-and-poetry-loving-poof remarks he made the other day at that conference of financial advisors. Ferguson reiterates that his remarks were “stupid.” The question then arises: He’s a smart guy, how did he end up saying […]
Posted inEducation, Higher Education
Jesus Historian Niall Ferguson and the Improving Standards of Public Discourse
History professor (or, as the news reports call him, “Harvard historian”) Niall Ferguson got in trouble when speaking at a conference of financial advisors. Tom Kostigen reports: Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes’ famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, […]
