Quantitative and formal analysis of international relations, comparative politics, and American politics.
Michael A. Allen A recent medical study has gained some media attention by finding and arguing that, among other factors, consumption of margarine by infants leads to lower IQ scores. The study, based on 590 New Zealand European children claims many other factors can contribute to the IQ of children such as consuming fish weekly and grains 4 … Read more
Some musings and reflections upon Star Trek (The Next Generation and a few of its successors for those keeping score), reminded me that the Ferengi had an extensive list of economic rules. The characters, from my recollection, were portrayed as a race of uber-capitalists who would exploit for the sake of profit at every turn. … Read more
Posting has slowed down over the holiday break, but I imagine things will begin to pick up again as the start of spring semester nears. Until then, I think PhD Comics has my New Year's resolution in mind: Michael A. AllenMichael A. Allen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. His … Read more
USA Today provides an infographic detailing the number of corruption convictions per 100,000 people. Using statistics from the Department of Justice, the article boldly declares that North Dakota is the most corrupt state in the Union while infamous Illinois comes in at a late 17th: Using conviction rates of corruption as a proxy for the … Read more
Traveling for Thanksgiving gave me the opportunity to abandon my daily reading schedule and come back to a stockpile of new posts to read. The highlights thus far from the last 5 days: – Flowing Data has a chart contest. The winner receives two Tufte books. Entries are due on Friday. – Andrew Gelman has … Read more
…but they do face dissertations. Orgtheory provides a link to Violet – an award winning text based adventure of a graduate student attempting to finish 1,000 words on his dissertation. Make sure you write! Bonus: MC Frontalot on the dangers of Grues and text based adventures. Edit: The game was quite the procrastination tool and … Read more
Jonathan Dingel (www.tradediversion.net) is up for a substantial scholarship for blogging and, apparently, is the only economics-based blog up for the scholarship. Given that there are also no other quantitative political science or formal theory blogs available (there are plenty of normative politics blogs, though) and his posts are actually useful academically, I encourage you … Read more
While Dinosaur Comics tends to touch on relevant political and philosophical issues, this intersection between game theory and experimental economics was worth reposting: It also gave me the opportunity to drop a line to Ryan North and recommend the Heller and Sieberg article on the FU Factor. Michael A. AllenMichael A. Allen is an Associate … Read more
Something many statisticians fear: Note: the original image showed three pumpkins with “endogeneity” carved across them. This photo seems lost to time, so I found a replacement that works. Michael A. AllenMichael A. Allen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. His research focuses on international conflict, military alliances, and quantitative … Read more
On October 7th, a peer of mine collected 20 surveys from self-selected (volunteered) members of the political science department (from first year graduate students to professors) on an electoral challenge. The survey presented seventeen different questions in regards to electoral outcomes and those who were able to predict the most accurately 14 of the 17 … Read more