Intellectual culture, like most social phenomena, is subject to pendulum swings, to backlashes and overcorrections. Right now, I think we’re witnessing a pretty wild back and forth about statistical reasoning, under the (not entirely helpful) frame of Big Data. I recently expressed some reservations about how statistical significance testing can lead us astray, but I […]
Continue reading →I thought this Tim Harford piece, on the seduction of so-called Big Data and the notion of post-theory, was really good. Harford makes several important points about the ways in which Big Data enthusiasts have underestimated or misunderstood long-term issues with analyzing statistical data. I want to expand a little bit on the question of […]
Continue reading →Austin Kleon’s 10 Ways to Share Your Work and Get Discovered Offered in sympathy and solidarity with makers, artists, and strivers everywhere. 1. You don’t need to be a genius… but it don’t hurt. 2. Think process, not product… but if you don’t end up with a product, you’ve got nothing to share. 3. Share […]
Continue reading →Updated January 26th. So, for the massive, massive throngs of people in the world who are on the edge of their seats in anticipation of what my dissertation topic will be– at this stage, I am still working on being able to get access to a particular data set, and I still have to go through […]
Continue reading →Validity, as you likely know, typically refers to how well a given experimental or test instrument actually measures the given construct it is meant to measure. If an experiment is meant to test vocabulary knowledge, for example, then its validity is dependent on how well it actually assesses and reports the vocabulary knowledge of its […]
Continue reading →The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy functions as both a joke and a warning. The idea is simple but powerful. A Texan decides he wants to prove his shooting prowess to his friends. He takes out his handgun and empties its magazine into the side of his barn. He then paints a bulls-eye where his shots are […]
Continue reading →I’m writing this from the Ninth Biennial Feminisms and Rhetorics conference, at Stanford University, where I’ll be presenting a paper on archival research. I had a situation this morning where I was genuinely unsure of the best way to be better a feminist (or feminist ally). I attended a panel in the first session on […]
Continue reading →In the social sciences and empirical humanities, it’s frequently easy to envy the directness of measurement that characterizes some work in the natural sciences. Because so much of what we measure in topics such as education, psychology, or sociology are incorporeal, it can be tempting to join a field where you can measure things in […]
Continue reading →This summer promises to be a heady time for me. I’ve been setting aside money for some time, so that I might be able to live this summer without having to work. I’m doing so because I’m taking my preliminary exams at the end of July. I can’t believe coursework has come and gone so […]
Continue reading →Don’t take my somewhat unhappy words from yesterday too darkly; like my first experience last year, I found this Conference on College Composition and Communication to be generative, fun, and inspiring. I truly do love my field, and I love my people, as much as they often drive me crazy. I went to a lot […]
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