Data

Election Predictions 2012

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Discussing the election is all but inevitable.  Given my proclivity for numbers, I gathered opinions from 11 willing "experts," including 5 political scientists, 3 bloggers from the QP, 8 PhDs, and members from other related field (Public Policy, Communication, and Planning). Nine of the members are from Boise State.  Of course, to reward those who … Read more

“Kountry” Package for STATA

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I may be late to the ball on this one, but in discussing a project that we're working on, fellow QP blogger Michael Allen recently pointed me to the "kountry" package for STATA. The package was created by Rafal Raciborski for the purposes of facilitating the creation of country codes and switching between codes provided by … Read more

Why Poor Predictions are a Justification for More (not less) Research

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Stevens’ criticisms of political science in her NY Times OP-Ed were not criticisms of political science per se; rather, they were criticisms of the scientific process in general. It is a frustrating process. It would be nice if we could identify all the causes of a particular outcome after doing a limited amount of research. … Read more

On the Utility of IR Research

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At the Duck of Minerva, Josh Busby has a post on the gap between political science research/IR and the policymaking community. I don't have a whole lot to say about the specific content of Busby's post, aside from the fact that I think this is an interesting an important debate to have. (Also, please note that the links in the quotations were provided in Busby's original post).

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Organized violence in Africa, 1989-2010

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Ralph Sundberg at the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) sent me this video they put together displaying organized violence in Africa for a 21 year time period: The data can be found here: http://ucdp.uu.se/ged/ Michael A. AllenMichael A. Allen is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. His research focuses on international conflict, … Read more

Data and Blogging

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Ah Friday, a great day to do final edits on my and Julie's paper for Midwest – also a good time for a quick blog post with a somewhat misleading title as the two subjects refer to two seperate links. First, via Freakonomics, is a competition for the Fraser Institute to have them collect data.  … Read more

Most Corrupt States in the US

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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