The professional world of political science — the job market, research methodology, peer review, academic writing, the role of formal theory in the discipline, and occasional dispatches from the trenches.
The “academic job market season” in political science starts in the fall and continues through the early spring.[0] If you aren’t familiar with how the academic job market works, it’s basically still old school: schools post ads looking to hire for a more or less specialized position, applicants (“candidates”) send in “packets” containing a curriculum … Read more
This post by Ezra Klein discusses this study, entitled “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” by Dan M. Kahan, Erica Cantrell Dawson, Ellen Peters, and Paul Slovic. The gist of the post and the study is that people are less mathematically sophisticated when considering statistical evidence regarding a political issue. The study presented people with “data” from a (fake) experiment about the effect of a hand cream … Read more
I’ve joked before with people that I liken social science models to rock songs. My actual mapping is horribly incomplete. So I’ll set that chatter to the side. That said, the practice of modeling, in my experience, is a lot like rock ‘n roll. You give me a topic, and I’ll think for a minute, … Read more
I just came off sabbatical. It’s nice to be teaching again. It’s also the cause for a moment of reflection. This post isn’t about the strategic calculus of real-world politics. Rather, it’s (sort of) about the strategic career calculus of political science. There are several milestones in the typical academic career. A key question at … Read more
…but the notable is frequently unnoted. This post, along with the always thought-provoking repartee with my friend Chris Bonneau, inspires me to write a post about selection effects and their ability to magically turn a mountain into a molehill. The short version of the story is that a brouhaha was breaking out at the University … Read more
Tonight’s Golden Globes reminded me of a point I haven’t seen made (though I am sure somebody has made it). Namely, why do actors and actresses thank a whole bunch of other people when they are on TV in front of millions of viewers who hate watching actors and actresses thank a whole bunch of other people? … Read more
I just finished writing this meandering post about sequential rationality. Subsequently, I thought of these better examples that come from different angles. First, a classic example (mostly) of failures of sequential rationality: food challenges. In most cases, most people who think they can eat that amount of food can eat that amount of food. They just end … Read more
It’s a new year, the ground is covered with more-than-ankle-deep snow, and I told a friend tonight that it seems like, over the past couple of weeks, the notion of a “day of the week” has lost all meaning. This is how winter break winds to a quiet close. It is an opportunity to take … Read more
As most things I encounter, This New York Times story got me to thinking about, well, me. Specifically, the article—discussing the Senate’s attempts to oversee the CIA’s interrogation programs—touches upon two strands of my research that, at first glance, might appear related only in that they both use mathematical models to analyze and characterize political phenomena. One … Read more
I am a game theorist. I love thinking about situations as strategic interactions. As a game theorist, I make assumptions all the time. (And I assume you do, too, in whatever you do. THAT’S META.) In political science, there are, broadly defined and in my estimation, four categories of theory. Game theory (which includes mechanism … Read more