Linear Digressions

Let's talk about randomness! Although randomness is pervasive throughout the natural world, it's surprisingly difficult to generate random numbers. And even if your numbers look random (but actually a...

19 Juni 201510min

Following up on our last episode about how experiments can be performed in political science, now we explore a high-profile case of an experiment gone wrong. An extremely high-profile paper that was...

9 Juni 201521min

The first of our two-parter discussing the recent electoral data fraud case. The results of the study in question were covered widely, including by This American Life (who later had to issue a retract...

5 Juni 20159min

In the first of a few episodes on fraud in election research, we’ll take a look at a case study from a previous Presidential election, where polling results were faked. What are some telltale signs...

1 Juni 201517min

There’s a big difference between a table of numbers or statistics, and the underlying story that a human might tell about how those numbers were generated. Think about a baseball game—the game stats...

20 Maj 201511min

Let’s talk money. As a “hot” career right now, data science can pay pretty well. But for an individual person matched with a specific job or industry, how much should someone expect to make? Since K...

16 Maj 201516min

Katie successfully defended her thesis! We celebrate her return, and talk a bit about what getting a PhD in Physics is like.

14 Maj 20153min

In the last episode, we zipped through neural nets and got a quick idea of how they work and why they can be so powerful. Here’s the real payoff of that work: In this episode, we’ll talk about a bran...

11 Maj 201510min