Like every other blogger with a political opinion, I read Paul Krugman’s essay on economics last week, and tagged it for Saturday’s Links Dump. And while I appreciate Eric Weinstein calling me out as part of the “high end blogosphere,” I’m not sure I have much to say about it that is useful. But, since… Continue reading Beauty’s Just Another Word I’m Never Certain How to Spell
Category: Social-Science
Religion Leads to Education
There’s an interesting report at Inside Higher Ed today on a study of religiosity and college. Some of the results will probably come as a surprise to many people around ScienceBlogs: # The odds of going to college increase for high school students who attend religious services more frequently or who view religion as more… Continue reading Religion Leads to Education
What People Think About Scientists
Just in time to feed into the discussion surrounding Unscientific America, there’s a new Pew Research Poll about public attitudes toward science. As is usually the case with social-science data, there’s something in here to bolster every opinion. The most striking of the summary findings, to me, is the second table down, in which the… Continue reading What People Think About Scientists
Kissing and Comic Books
Two things that are worth a plug beyond the Links Dump level: 1) Over at the Intersection, Sheril Kirshenbaum wants you to look at pictures of people kissing. This is for Science, so stop giggling, and tell her what you think of the pictures. 2) There’s a new blog, Ecocomics, dedicated to exploring the burning… Continue reading Kissing and Comic Books
There’s No Escaping Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell has a number of public responses to the sort of thing I ranted about the other day— not to me specifically, mind, but to the same general points– on his own blog and on ESPN’s Page 2. It’s pretty much the same argument others made in the comments to my post. Taking a… Continue reading There’s No Escaping Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell Is No Charles Barkley
I’m never quite sure what to make of Malcolm Gladwell. Lots of smart people seem to be favorably impressed by his writing and ideas, but whenever I actually read anything by him, there doesn’t seem to be much there. Take, for example, this New Yorker piece on basketball as a metaphor for innovation. As seems… Continue reading Malcolm Gladwell Is No Charles Barkley
Teams Who Are Ahead Win More Frequently
Over at the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog, Justin Wolfers gets into the March Madness spirit by reporting on a study of basketball games that yields the counter-intuitive result that being slightly behind at halftime makes a team more likely to win. It comes complete with a spiffy graph: Explained by Wolfers thusly: The first… Continue reading Teams Who Are Ahead Win More Frequently
Data Presentation Nerdery
A couple of smallish items that came up in recent days, that can be grouped together under the general heading of “data presentation oddities.” First, over at Crooked Timber, Kieran Healy tries out a semi-hemi-demi-log plot for a graph of WPA expenditures. The problem he’s trying to address is the gigantic difference in magnitudes between… Continue reading Data Presentation Nerdery
A Beautiful Theory, Impervious to Ugly Facts
Via Matt Yglesias, another example of why I have a hard time taking economists seriously, talking about a measure of stock prices: [T]he “Q” ratio [is] the value of the stock market relative to the replacement cost of net assets. The basic logic behind “Q” is that capitalism works. If the “Q” is above 1.0,… Continue reading A Beautiful Theory, Impervious to Ugly Facts