Less than a week until the PolMeth application deadline! I'm on the program committee, and look forward to reviewing submissions. If you're developing new methods or applying sophisticated approaches to substantive political questions, submit your work. Funds are available to support some attendees.
Happy New Year all! A 🧵 on papers I've had the privilege working on with folks in 2025.
#rstats
It is with profound sadness I heard that my long-time friend and colleague, John Fox passed away this week.
He was the author of {car}, {effects}, {Rcmdr}, ... and numerous influential books. I will miss him greatly.
www.john-fox.ca
A shitty map created by ChatGPT5. it purports to be US States with an R in their name, but it's wrong and dumb and worthless just like LLMs.
My goto is to ask LLMs how many states have R in their name. They always fail. GPT 5 included Indiana, Illinois, and Texas in its list. It then asked me if I wanted an alphabetical highlighted map. Sure, why not.
What I hate about this is that, for GPT-6, they're going to do
if "blueberry" in prompt:
print("there are two Bs in blueberry")
and claim it is now more intelligent than GPT-5.
The fact that ChatGPT can produce an essay about the history of blueberries but can't count the letters is a great example of how it is a text producing machine not a reasoning machine.
(real, one-shot :p )
I’m thrilled to share new work out in Social Networks!
In this project, randomly allocating students to teams permitted identifying causal effects of co-membership.
Thanks to Sarah Gordon, Wayne Baker, Jose Uribe, and Cassandra Chambers for bringing me on!
Ful article: 📄 lnkd.in/e9TyvnRX
Do women politicians address violence against women more effectively?
It would be a big deal if they do!
It would provide (perhaps more) reason(s) to elect more women!
But I'm skeptical that this study actually shows that women politicians reduce violence against women.
Here's one reason why:
Great! I'll send you an email. Thank you, Kevin!
Got it. Thank you. I'll take Kevin up on it then!
Thank you, Kevin! I appreciate it. I'll let you know :)
Thank you very much for the kind offer! I'd be grateful if you read mine (I'm looking for a range of positions including R2 and teaching). Please let me know if and how I should proceed. Thank you!
A cartoon by Tom Toro. #NewYorkerCartoons
See more cartoons and other funny stuff from New Yorker Humor: nyer.cm/9mf6isU
I understand why people are theorizing that the Grok/South Africa thing was caused by a system prompt, but what it really reminds me of is Golden Gate Claude, which involved artificially amplifying some model features. I am so curious about how this happened. www.anthropic.com/news/golden-...
Regression and other stories, chapter 16, has a discussion in the same vein that I really like (and some criticism of traditional power analysis): users.aalto.fi/~ave/ROS.pdf
The R package naming convention, especially when R is the only capital letter and you have to press shift only for that letter.
Gave a talk to our PhD students today, and feeling appreciative of all the recent methods work on improving common practices. Thanks to all the authors who work to make their work accessible, especially on social media.
A few articles we discussed:
Talk to me the way Claude talks to me :)
A group of men and women pose for a photo in a classroom or conference room. The men, dressed in a mix of formal and casual attire, stand on the left, while the women, mostly wearing black abayas and niqabs, stand on the right. A banner with Arabic text and a logo is visible on the wall behind them. The room is furnished with tables, chairs, and various personal belongings, such as bags and water bottles. The setting suggests a professional or educational gathering.
Materials such as keychains and pins with the Wikipedia puzzle globe logo.
A certificate award ceremony captures a moment of achievement as a woman in a niqab receives recognition. Organizers stand by a table filled with awards and gifts, celebrating the successful completion of the program.
Participants sitting at a round table, with notepads and pens.
Yemen sparked a digital education revolution with the second phase of “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom”, which empowered 22 teachers and trainees to boost digital literacy. Led by the Wikimedians of Yemen User Group, volunteers made 1,600+ edits on Arabic Wikipedia.
Read more ➡️ w.wiki/_paW2
Thrilled to have this published.
Everything you've wanted to know about political Youtube -- from Kevin Munger, Jim Bisbee (@jamesbisbee.bsky.social), Omer Yalcin (@ofyalcin.bsky.social), Joe Phillips (@polpsychjoe.bsky.social), and myself.
Out now in the Journal of Quantitative Description.
New publication! Please check out our open access work on a quantitative description of political YouTube—by Kevin Munger, @jamesbisbee.bsky.social, myself, @polpsychjoe.bsky.social, and @matthindman.bsky.social.
Thread🧵 by @polpsychjoe.bsky.social below 👇
Slashed zero (0̸), a representation of the number 0 (zero) to distinguish it from the letter O Slashed letter 'O' (O̸), a representation of the letter O to distinguish it from the number 0 (zero)
Our top 10 downloads of 2024. Number 3...
How do populist voters differ from other voters and among themselves?
Caner Simsek @uni-muenster.de
Read more here in 'Voices unheard: How feelings of inefficacy fuel populism'
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
#Populism #Populistvoting
🎉 My favorite PhD chapter found its home in New Media & Society! I explore whether offline ties matter in online elections, focusing on @wikipedia.bsky.social. In short: They do! Personal connections to voters & candidates affect a user's adminship votes. 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/1461... #PoliSky #SocSky
Hello! It's me.