MAPSS

Call for applications for Summer Institute at Duke

January 24, 2008 – 8:06 pm
EITM: http://www.poli.duke.edu/eitm/application.htm "The scientific study of politics requires empirical evaluation of theoretical models, but theories too often proliferate without adequate testing, and empirical work too frequently applies sketchy and oversimplified theory. In EITM, researchers use recent advances in game theory and mathematical modeling to develop theoretical models of politics. These models are then subjected to rigorous tests that meet the highest standards of empirical research, including statistical analysis, experiments, and case studies. In some instances, researchers create new estimators designed to closely test the assumptions and predictions of the theoretical models. By integrating models and data, EITM is creating a new ...

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Biostatistician laments reluctance to share data

January 24, 2008 – 12:15 pm
Andrew Vickers, a biostatistician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, wrote in the NY Times lamenting the reluctance to share data. " Dr John Kirwan, a rheumatologist from the University of Bristol in England, has studied researchers’ attitudes on sharing data from clinical trials. He found that three-quarters of researchers he surveyed, as well as a major industry group, opposed making original trial data available. It is worth restating this finding: most scientists doing research on how best to help those in pain, or at risk of death, want to keep their data a secret. Dr. Kirwan went on to ask his subjects why. Their reasons were entirely trivial: one cited the difficult of putting together a data set (wouldn’t this have to be done anyway in order to publish a paper?); another was concerned that the data might be analyzed using invalid methods (surely a judgment for the scientific community ...

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

ANES: 7 Day period has begun

January 16, 2008 – 10:04 am
Today begins the 7-day period in which you can help us evaluate the many new proposals that have been put forward for upcoming American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys. Between now and January 22, we ask that you make a small, but important contribution to the quality of the 2008 ANES surveys by offering advice that we and the proposals authors' can use to increase the effectiveness of our questionnaires. We are most interested in comments that can increase the range of hypothesis tests in which particular questions can be used. At the end of this letter are the lists of the proposals we have received. You can read the full proposals in the Online Commons at: http://www.electionstudies.org If you can comment on even one of these proposals, it will help future users of the ANES a great deal. Please note that at the conclusion of the one-week comment period, proposal authors will then have an additional week to revise their proposals in response ...

Posted in ANES | No Comments »

ANES Announcement

January 9, 2008 – 11:06 am
There is only one week left to propose questions for inclusion on upcoming American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys! 1) The 2008 ANES Time Series You may submit a proposal for questions to be included in the 2008 ANES Time Series face-to-face presidential election study. The time series continues a string of interviews that began in 1948. We are accepting two kinds of proposals: changes to the ANES "core" questions (the set of questions that the ANES Time Series asks repeatedly over time) and changes to the rest of the survey (including proposals to capture opinions and attitudes that are especially relevant to the November 2008 presidential and congressional elections). 2) Terrorism and Homeland Security We are also running a special competition in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security. For that competition, we are accepting proposals pertinent to the intersection between elections and DHS emphases on terrorism, natural disasters, risk perception, and preparedness. Questions from successful proposals in this competition can be included on the 2008-2009 ...

Posted in ANES | No Comments »

Job Opportunity

January 8, 2008 – 6:26 pm
From Torsten Neilands Dear Colleagues, A project on which I'm working recently received continuation funding to collect cohort data for another five year funding cycle. The project's PI, Elise Riley, and its project director, Jennifer Cohen, are looking to hire a statistician at 50% effort. The job description appears below. Please feel free to forward this job announcement on to interested individuals or groups and please direct all inquiries about the position to Jennifer Cohen (her e-mail address appears in the job description). With best wishes for a happy 2008, Tor Neilands We are seeking a statistician for 50% employment with our UCSF research study regarding the longitudinal effects of HIV, housing, drug use and social support on the victimization and risk behavior of unstably housed women.  Strong organizational skills and an ability to communicate well will be necessary in this position.  Three to five years of statistical experience are preferred and no supervisory responsibility ...

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Upcoming talk: Information Systems Colloquium Announcement

November 29, 2007 – 12:25 pm
  http://isl.stanford.edu/colloquium.html Title: Statistical Analysis of Online News Speaker: Laurent El Ghaoui, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of California, Berkeley 4:15 - 5:15 pm, Packard 101 Thursday, Nov 29, 2007 (Refreshments after the talk) Abstract : Each day we are inundated with an avalanche of online news. Yet is is currently hard to obtain a global view of this information. What are the images that various news media project about specific topics, such as global warming, human rights or presidential candidates? How do these images evolve over time? How do they differ across different media sources, scientific or mainstream? What are the dynamics of news events across news networks? Modern statistical learning and optimization methods are having a great impact in fields where large amounts of data have become recently available, such as biology or finance. With no doubt, such methods ...

Posted in Upcoming Talks | No Comments »

Upcoming talk: Jonathan Wand: Improving the Measurement of Interpersonally Incomparable Data

November 20, 2007 – 7:10 pm
November 27th Jonathan Wand is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University and a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar at the University of Michigan. His applied and computational statistical research interests include models of dynamic and strategic individual choice behavior, non-parametric and semi-parametric scaling methods, and shape constrained inference for testing formal models.Substantively, he works on elections, campaign finance, public opinion and health care policy. Jonathan is the recipient of both the Harold Gosnell Award from the APSA and the Robert H. Durr Award from the MPSA for his research on political methodology. Abstract for the talk: Attitudes and attributes of individuals are often measured by means of survey questions with ordered response categories, and these measures are commonly employed to make interpersonal comparisons. These types of comparisons, however, rely on the assumption that individuals agree on the meaning of the scale categories. The interpersonal incomparability ...

Posted in Fall 2007 MAPSS Talks | No Comments »

Upcoming talk: Arie Kapteyn: Nov 6th: Self Reported Disability and Reference Groups

November 1, 2007 – 7:08 pm
The talk will take place at the Meyer Forum Room at 12:15 pm. Bio: Arie Kapteyn is a senior economist at the RAND Corporation and director of RAND Labor and Population. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, past president of the European Society for Population Economics, and corresponding member of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before joining RAND, Dr. Kapteyn held a chair in econometrics at Tilburg University, where he served the university in numerous capacities, including dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration; founder and director of Center (a research institute and graduate school) and of CentERdata (a survey research institute); and director of CentER Applied Research (a contract research institute). He has held visiting positions at several universities, including Princeton University, California Institute of Technology, Australian National University, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, University of Bristol, and University of Southern California. Dr. Kapteyn’s research ...

Posted in Fall 2007 MAPSS Talks | No Comments »

Upcoming talks: October 23rd: Mark Appelbaum - When Samples are small

October 20, 2007 – 7:08 pm
The talk will be held at the Meyer Forum Room, Room 124 Bio: Mark Appelbaum is a Professor of Psychology at UCSD and until July 1 of this year was Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education at UCSD. Appelbaum specializes in Quantitative Psychology including applied statistics, experimental design, applied measurement and assessment. He has been Editor of the Psychological Bulletin and was Founding Editor of Psychological Methods. He was a member of the SAT Committee of the College Board. Prior to joining the faculty at UCSD he was a on the faculties of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Vanderbilt University. Abstract for the Talk: It is not uncommon, especially in studies of special populations and pilot studies, for researchers to be faced with special analytic problems due to the small numbers of subjects they have amassed. Under these circumstances, when power is already problematic, it may be difficult to ...

Posted in Fall 2007 MAPSS Talks | No Comments »

Upcoming talk: Oct. 16th - The human visual pathways: Maps, plasticity, and reading

October 9, 2007 – 11:24 am
Presented by Dr. Brian Wandell Location: Meyer Forum Room Visual cortex has been an excellent model system for developing a quantitative understanding of brain function. We understand a great deal about the physical signals that initiate vision, and this knowledge has led to a relatively advanced understanding of the organization of major structures in visual cortex. This talk will explain several measurements and neuroimaging methods that are used to understand human visual cortex. First, we have developed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods for measuring and quantifying the properties of maps in individual human and macaque brains. Second, we have made functional measurements of cortical plasticity to examine the consequences of abnormal retinal development, retinal disorders, and acquired damage. These experiments were performed in both human and macaque. Third, we are combining fMRI with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), to understand visual development of the pathways needed for reading. Specifically, as children develop and ...

Posted in Fall 2007 MAPSS Talks | No Comments »