Sounds like a Comprehensive Exam Question

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A recent NY Times article pointed out a literature issue in the field of biology, and I began to wonder if political scientists have the same problem. The problem: even though Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species laid the foundation for Modern Biology, it is surprisingly uncommon for biologists to actually read the book … Read more

The Unbearable Lightness of Game Theory?

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OrgTheory.net has a great post today assessing the merits of game theory.  The author makes some excellent points.  In particular, he points out that some of the more interesting outcomes we see in the social sciences are off-equilibrium–inherently, then, these are the ones that we can’t explain with game theory.  Additionally, and more generally as a criticism of rational choice, individuals don’t necessarily make decisions that conform to what we typically think of as the rules that describe rational actors.

Check out the post at OrgTheory.net, and the preceding entry by the same blogger (Michael McBride) about game theory’s potentially misleading name, and meet me back here after the jump.

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New Author: Jason Steck joins the Quantitative Peace

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The Quantitative Peace welcomes Jason Steck, of Creighton University, as a new contributor to the blog.  With a background in International Relations, Civil-Military Relations, and formal modeling, we look forward to Jason’s insights, observations, and contributions to the developing community and readership of the Quantitative Peace.     

Are rational decisions produced by the conscious or subconscious mind?

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Are people capable of making fully conscious decisions? Or does our subconscious play an unforeseen role in influencing our decisions? If our subconscious does play a role, can we still make rational decisions?

The following documentary (referred to us by Geoff McGovern) deals with the "hidden motives" of the mind. It got me thinking about whether we can still claim people are making rational decisions even if we believed they were making those decisions subconsciously.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/23327/scientific-american-frontiers-hidden-motives#s-p1-so-i0

More after the jump….

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Do Deployed US Troops foster Economic Growth?

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While browsing newly posted articles at the Social Science Research Network, I came across this paper by Garett Jones and Tim Kane.  The abstract: In the midst of a major U.S. military effort in Iraq and the Middle East, economists should be able to assess the relationship between U.S. troops and growth.   The necessity of … Read more

Stats Professors and State Lotteries

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Last month, Washington and Lee professor Scott Hoover announced that he intended to sue the Virginia State Lottery (a threat that became a lawsuit yesterday).  Hoover, a business finance professor, wasn’t upset that he didn’t win the lottery–he was upset that it had become impossible to win the prize.  His complaint is that the Virginia … Read more

Economists’ Logic of Spending, Saving, and Borrowing

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The guys at the Freakonomics blog can always be counted on for some interesting conversation starters.  Today, Steven Levitt pits conventional wisdom about saving money against advice on the topic from Milton Friedman (via Jose Scheinkman).  Conventional wisdom (taking the form of Levitt’s wife) holds that one should prudently save money from all income, no … Read more

A Few Non-Connected Thoughts and Links

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The three of us, along with Ray Carman, traveled to New York City for the weekend to enjoy a few hours of Eddie Izzard performing at Radio City Music Hall for this current "Stripped" tour.  As such, the trip is still fresh in my mind as I return to work on a few projects involving … Read more

Did Data Kill Theory?

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Thanks to Geoff McGovern for pointing us toward a fascinating essay in Wired.  Chris Anderson posits that the accessibility of information has vaulted us into what he calls the Petrabyte Age, in which

information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional
taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls
for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the
tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality. It
forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for
it later.

Given how much data is readily available, Anderson continues, "[w]e can
analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show."  The
scientific method encourages us to explain what we know about the world
and make greater generalizations about the rest of it that we have not
observed; but if we can observe everything, essentially, it seems that
generalizations are no longer necessary.  We don’t need to guess about
what the world might look like, because an hour in front of the
computer can tell us. 

More after the jump.

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Conferences go digital and explore the World of Warcraft

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I have actively played video games since before I could actively recall solid memories of my childhood.*  Some of my earliest memories do include an Atari system set up by my father and primitive graphics.  A lifetime of video games has lead to my current past time of World of Warcraft which I have since … Read more