I had to geocode about 50,000 addresses for a project recently and found a new user-written Stata command, georoute: The authors argue their command is easier to use than others, some of which apparently don’t work anymore. The major issue for all of these commands appears to be the source dataset. Turns out it is tough to process thousands of observations, while at the same time geocoding...
College dropout refuses to leave her dorm room
I now know where my retirement home will be. Hunter College is waging a court battle to evict a stubborn student who refuses to leave her dorm room some two years after dropping out. Delaware native Lisa S. Palmer — who has not paid rent since 2016 — refuses to leave Room E579 at the school’s 425 E. 25th St. co-ed dormitory, according to an eviction lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The...
More data on how school shootings rarely occur
From the researcher at Northeastern who wrote the USA Today op-ed; there are some nice graphics. Mass school shootings are incredibly rare events. In research publishing later this year, Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel found that on average, mass murders occur between 20 and 30 times per year, and about one of those incidents on average takes place at a school. […] Their research also...
Jobs on the right in data and analytics
From the Polmeth listserv: There’s a new jobs board available for those interested in data and digital work on the right side of the political spectrum. It’s run by Eric Wilson, formerly of the Rubio campaign and Ed Gillespie’s gubernatorial and senatorial efforts. Best, LT ************************************************************** Political Methodology E-Mail List Editors:...
Stephen Porter is getting pounded in the media
First this: Professor Stephen Porter, an award-winning forensic psychology expert at UBCO, has stepped aside from teaching duties after his practice was placed under supervision by the B.C. College of Psychologists with a “particular focus on” sexual harassment and boundary issues. Two complainants have come forward to CBC, one alleging Porter sexually harassed her and another...
The inside story of how an Ivy League food scientist turned shoddy data into viral studies
But for years, Wansink’s inbox has been filled with chatter that, according to independent statisticians, is blatant p-hacking. “Pattern doesn’t look good,” Payne of New Mexico State wrote to Wansink and David Just, another Cornell professor, in April 2009, after what Payne called a “marathon” data-crunching session for an experiment about eating and TV-watching. “I also ran — i am not kidding —...
School shootings, mathematics edition
I always hated square roots; we should ban them, for the sake of the children: On the afternoon of Feb. 20, detectives investigated a report of terroristic threats at the school, where they learned that a student had been completing a math problem that required drawing the square-root sign. Students in the group began commenting that the symbol, which represents a number that when multiplied by...
Causal inference workshops at Northwestern
Northwestern University and Duke University are holding our “main” week-long workshop on Research Design for Causal Inference – our ninth annual workshop — at Northwestern Law School in downtown Chicago. We invite you to attend. Our apologies for the length of this message. Main Workshop: Monday – Friday, June 18-22, 2018 We will also be holding an “Advanced” Workshop the following...
Data on school shootings; they are actually quite rare
School shootings in the sense of multiple fatalities, which occur about once a year. From a criminology professor: Everytown for Gun Safety reported that there have been 290 school shootings since the catastrophic massacre in Newtown, Conn., more than five years ago. However, very few of these were anything akin to Sandy Hook or Parkland. Sure, they all involved a school of some type (including...
University of Kansas summer stats camp
The Center for Research Methods and Data Analysis at the University of Kansas will host the Summer Statistical Institute (Stats Camp) from May 21 through June 8, 2018. Please visit the Web homepage for this event at . These sessions are a combination of lecture format presentations and workshops for “hands on” practice. We recommend everybody should bring a laptop computer on which...