Math and Probability

Teaching Introductory Graduate Methods: Some Ideas About Understanding Sampling Distributions

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Everyone has their own way of teaching methods, but in this entry I thought I’d share a brief exercise that I thought worked well. This code was developed when I was the teaching assistant for a second-semester methods class focusing on regression. Specifically, this was a section of the class from the first few weeks … Read more

History vs. Political Science? Temporally Constrained Studies and Generalizability.

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So this is my first post back from a prolonged break. As I mentioned in a previous—albeit brief—entry, I’ve had a busy but enjoyable summer. I got married, defended my dissertation at the beginning of July, and my wife and I have since relocated to Tuscaloosa, Alabama where I’ve accepted a position as a post-doc. … Read more

Military Capabilities

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Phil Arena has a very cool post up wherein he explores a potential alternative to the ubiquitous CINC score for measuring military capabilities. This strikes me as something that is long overdue.  And there are a couple of things that I like about the measure just from taking a quick glance at it. First, given … 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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Math’s PR Problem OR Changing our Educational System

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I was listening to the BBC's Global News Podast this morning and found an interesting segment on the utility of mathematical modeling. Professor John Adam's book (which can be found here) looks at how one can model various aspects of urban life—pollution, traffic congestion, number of dentists offices, etc. I've not read the book, but … Read more

Poker is a game of skill

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The New York Times (this may cost you one of your monthly alloted articles) reports on a new article by Levitt and Miles that argues that poker is a game of skill and not a game of chance.  The policy-relevant implications for the study deals with legalization – several prohibitions against poker are codified with … Read more

Facts and Stuff on the Distributions of Income and Race in America

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Via Andrew Gelman at the Monkey Cage, an article on this recent Gallup poll regarding people's income and their perceptions of income distributions, tax burdens, etc. 

The thrust of the article is that there are some disparities between where people fall in the overall income distribution and their perceptions of how the tax burden should be distributed—Not my normal thing, but interesting nevertheless.

More below…

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Stupid people doing their stupid jobs

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Dan Drezner has a good post that is worth a read.  Again, I think the issue he's discussing raises the question on how some of these lower-level actors fit into the policymaking process.  This piece also sort of raises the issue of how these actors should fit into the broader public discourse over policies as … Read more

Sounds About Right

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courtesy: www.smbc-comics.com Michael FlynnMichael Flynn is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Kansas State University. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Binghamton University in 2013. His research focuses on the political economy of foreign policy with a specific focus on security cooperation and military deployments. www.m-flynn.com

Rumsfeld Interview

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Given this piece from the other day, I thought this was an appropriate followup.  Daily Show fans have probably already seen his interview from last night with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld, but for those who have not I would recommend it.  Rumsfeld was unquestionably one of the most important architects of the Iraq war, … Read more