As many of you know, I have started using LaTeX to create both documents and slides. To this end, I have created a template that includes the basic types of slides that I use in presentation. For those who want to see what Beamer can do and how technical it is (or is not -- depending on your perspective), I have linked the PDF of the gallery and the .tex file used to create the PDF. Comparing the two files should make it easy to see how to create Beamer presentations.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
A Promising New Option for Putting Data Skills to Use
In the tradition of Doctors Without Borders and similar programs, a team of data analysts are putting together a program to facilitate pro bono -- but socially important -- data analysis work. More after the break.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Comments now open... I think
I believe I have solved the problem of comments requiring a log in. Strangely, I had to revert to an old version of the blog management interface to reveal the dialogue box where I could allow open commenting.
Hopefully, people can now comment but we won't see the blog fill up with spam. Please comment away on new or older posts.
Hopefully, people can now comment but we won't see the blog fill up with spam. Please comment away on new or older posts.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
New EM and HS Internship Program at the Bush School
This information just came in about an internship program that may be of interest to emergency management and homeland security students. Information after the break.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Resources on Getting Started with LaTeX
I ran across a nice set of lecture notes and supplemental material in getting started with LaTeX. This information was written for a short course in psychology (so some of the material is specific to academic psychology research) and provides an introduction to document production in LaTeX, Beamer (for presentation slides), BibTex (citation management for LaTeX documents) and Sweave (which allows you to run R and produce results within LaTeX documents).
If nothing else, you can see how these various tools are integrated.
Link after the break.
If nothing else, you can see how these various tools are integrated.
Link after the break.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Public Management Journal Comparisons Reconsidered
I have decided to conduct a more detailed assessment of journal rankings and impact factor in public management. I discussed the raw impact factors in a previous post. I have been able to locate more specific data that reveals some interesting patterns.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Jobs in PA and Homeland Security at VCU
I am still working on how to post the PDF flier I got, but Virginia Commonwealth is looking to hiring multiple people for tenure-track positions in Public Administration, Homeland Security, and some other fields.
I will try to clean this up - but for now here is a pasted version of the PDF.
I will try to clean this up - but for now here is a pasted version of the PDF.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
A related post on the fragility of models based on poorly distributed data
As an aside to my discussion of ART and the fragility of high dimensionality models, you can find a related discussion in this post on Gelman's excellent statistics and political science blog.
His post relates to the fragility of even Chi-squared tests (among the most robust tests out there) in the face of data with odd cluster structures. Public management survey research faces these sorts of odd clusters all of the time. If Chi-squared can be fragile in these cases, multinomial probit does not stand a chance.
The moral of the story is know your data and your models.
His post relates to the fragility of even Chi-squared tests (among the most robust tests out there) in the face of data with odd cluster structures. Public management survey research faces these sorts of odd clusters all of the time. If Chi-squared can be fragile in these cases, multinomial probit does not stand a chance.
The moral of the story is know your data and your models.
Keep the eyeballs coming...and feel free to comment
I am continuing to develop posts for the blog despite the slow down. The crazy number of interviews we are doing at the Bush School (current guess is 16 for five positions this year) and my work on a mixed-methods textbook has demanded much of my attention.. but I hope to post every week or two.
Expect posts soon on the logic of LaTeX (that is, how LaTeX works and is different from Word) and the selection strategy for controlling confounding effects in Achen's ART (as applied to PA subjects). I may cross-post some interesting
I am happy to report that I am slowly building up some visits (though few "subscriptions" -- but I think blog subscriptions are old tech). I would love to see more reaction to the posts though. Please do feel free to comment.
Expect posts soon on the logic of LaTeX (that is, how LaTeX works and is different from Word) and the selection strategy for controlling confounding effects in Achen's ART (as applied to PA subjects). I may cross-post some interesting
I am happy to report that I am slowly building up some visits (though few "subscriptions" -- but I think blog subscriptions are old tech). I would love to see more reaction to the posts though. Please do feel free to comment.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A Little Work on Journal Rankings in Public Management
For a variety of reasons, I have been thinking about how to systematize journal rankings in public management. We throw around terms like "top tier", "second tier" and the like without much thought as to what they mean.
As a rough start, I figured I would define the tiers along these lines. "Top tier" means an impact factor of 2 or greater. Second tier would include journals that have between an impact factor between 1 and 2. Anything with an impact factor of less than 1 is clearly below that - "third tier" if you must.
The list from JCR (2010) for public administration turns up some interesting comparisons. I am dropping journals that I have not heard of - often specific field journals (that may be quite good, but not really mainstream public management like the Journal of Climate Policy).
Top tier:
JPAM (2.246)
JPART (2.086)
That's it. No other listed PA journal gets a score above 2. Given that JPAM publishes a vanishingly small number of management oriented articles -- I think of it as basically an applied economics journal at this point -- this means there is one public management journal in the top tier.
Second tier:
International Public Management Journal (1.95 - sooo close)
Governance (1.78)
Public Management Review (1.295)
Public Administration (1.292)
Public Administration Review (1.141)
American Review of Public Administration (1.00)
This has some interesting surprises. PAR comes in near the bottom of the tier but I wonder if this is an artifact of the recent editorial approach to publish a number of non-traditional article types like administrative bios, public document analyses, and more extensive book reviews. IPMJ, Governance, PMR, and PA are all strongly international journals. It is interesting to see international journals dominate the top of the second tier.
Third tier:
Administration and Society (.944)
Review of Public Personnel Administration (.891)
Public Administration and Development (.783)
Policy and Politics (.754)
Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (.411)
This is a non-comprehensive list - but you can see the PA sub-fields start to come in. Sadly Administration and Society -- a journal that used to be a popular general interest outlet -- has dropped to an impact level similar to subfield journals. Incidentally, NVSQ is not listed as a PA journal (and there is no public management list) but it has an impact factor in this range of .648.
What does this mean? Well, there are no public management outlets that compete with the top field journals in political science (APSR and AJPS have impact factors at or above 3). Within public management, the hierarchy seems pretty clear. There is a top tier -- JPAM and JPART. The second tier includes a couple of domestic outlets near the bottom (PAR and ARPA) and a number of increasingly prominent European outlets (PMR, IJPM, etc.). The third tier is mostly sub-field journals with some general journals that have little visibility (A&S and P&P).
Mostly this tells me what we all need to write and cite more. I strongly suspect that the average public management article has fewer citations than the average political science article (and not only trivially so because of PAR's book reviews, etc). The norm of extensive citation create a public good for the field to inflate average citation rates for the journals. We may have some of our "impact" diverted into books, but I don't think that explains the major gap between public management journals and political science or economics journals.
Any reactions?
As a rough start, I figured I would define the tiers along these lines. "Top tier" means an impact factor of 2 or greater. Second tier would include journals that have between an impact factor between 1 and 2. Anything with an impact factor of less than 1 is clearly below that - "third tier" if you must.
The list from JCR (2010) for public administration turns up some interesting comparisons. I am dropping journals that I have not heard of - often specific field journals (that may be quite good, but not really mainstream public management like the Journal of Climate Policy).
Top tier:
JPAM (2.246)
JPART (2.086)
That's it. No other listed PA journal gets a score above 2. Given that JPAM publishes a vanishingly small number of management oriented articles -- I think of it as basically an applied economics journal at this point -- this means there is one public management journal in the top tier.
Second tier:
International Public Management Journal (1.95 - sooo close)
Governance (1.78)
Public Management Review (1.295)
Public Administration (1.292)
Public Administration Review (1.141)
American Review of Public Administration (1.00)
This has some interesting surprises. PAR comes in near the bottom of the tier but I wonder if this is an artifact of the recent editorial approach to publish a number of non-traditional article types like administrative bios, public document analyses, and more extensive book reviews. IPMJ, Governance, PMR, and PA are all strongly international journals. It is interesting to see international journals dominate the top of the second tier.
Third tier:
Administration and Society (.944)
Review of Public Personnel Administration (.891)
Public Administration and Development (.783)
Policy and Politics (.754)
Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (.411)
This is a non-comprehensive list - but you can see the PA sub-fields start to come in. Sadly Administration and Society -- a journal that used to be a popular general interest outlet -- has dropped to an impact level similar to subfield journals. Incidentally, NVSQ is not listed as a PA journal (and there is no public management list) but it has an impact factor in this range of .648.
What does this mean? Well, there are no public management outlets that compete with the top field journals in political science (APSR and AJPS have impact factors at or above 3). Within public management, the hierarchy seems pretty clear. There is a top tier -- JPAM and JPART. The second tier includes a couple of domestic outlets near the bottom (PAR and ARPA) and a number of increasingly prominent European outlets (PMR, IJPM, etc.). The third tier is mostly sub-field journals with some general journals that have little visibility (A&S and P&P).
Mostly this tells me what we all need to write and cite more. I strongly suspect that the average public management article has fewer citations than the average political science article (and not only trivially so because of PAR's book reviews, etc). The norm of extensive citation create a public good for the field to inflate average citation rates for the journals. We may have some of our "impact" diverted into books, but I don't think that explains the major gap between public management journals and political science or economics journals.
Any reactions?
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
ART and the Curse of Dimensionality
I will begin my discussion of ART ("a rule of three" - as discussed in a post last week) with a look at the statistical problem that motivates ART.
In this recent presentation at Texas A&M, Achen focused on two motivations for ART: [1] the frailty of high dimensional models, and [2] strong linearity assumptions. I may return to the linearity problems later (I am a little less worried about this than Chris Achen seems to be), but I want to focus on dimensionality for a moment.
The "curse of dimensionality" has been the subject of some discussion within social science models -- but the development of more complicated statistical models has continued unabated. The core idea is that finding the maximum of a high dimensional space is hard -- sometimes very hard. In the context of social science models, parameter estimates of high dimensional models may be subject to a great deal of influence or leverage. For example, you may have a large sample overall but have very few Hispanic respondents. The typical strategy of including a dummy variable for Hispanic ethnicity assumes that Hispanic respondent vary only in the intercept (and respond similarly to non-Hispanic respondents in regards to all other variables). The alternative approach (in something akin to a hierarchical model - with ethnicity as a level) is to allow both the intercept and other slopes vary by ethnicity -- but this places remarkable demands on the sample of data. Achen's concern is that statistical models will almost always give us some answer. Relying on variation within a small sub-sample (say, Hispanic respondents in a particular management survey), we will get a coefficient but that coefficient may be unreliable.
Some of this problem is identifiable through careful assessment of leverage diagnostics. If you look at Cook's D values, etc. you can diagnose situations where small sub-samples sizes within your study create fragile coefficients prone to leverage from a small number of observations. Even this becomes difficult with non-continuous independent and dependent, variables though. (but see this paper for an interesting strategy).
Achen argues that we can avoid this situation entirely by more carefully selecting a sample. If we want to look at the behavior of Hispanic administrators, we can select a sample of Hispanic administrators. If we think ethnicity matters but that we don't have enough Hispanic respondents to ensure stable/reliable parameter estimates, we are better off constructing a sample without variation in ethnicity (by omitting Hispanic respondents) and then saying that the sample is homogeneous in terms of ethnicity.
I will return to the subject of sampling as a solution, but I will leave you with two thoughts: [1] Is this approach useful outside of the NES world of tens of thousands of observations from which one can create homogenous sub-samples, [2] will this ghettoize the study of race and ethnic minorities as the "normal" research proceeds to test hypotheses with racially and ethnically homogeneous samples (read "white, male, moderately educated non-southerners").
In the short term, are you concerned that in public management large models (those containing many independent variables) are fragile? Are you intrigued by the strategy of selecting a sample uniform with respect to variables for which you want to control rather than introducing control variables?
In this recent presentation at Texas A&M, Achen focused on two motivations for ART: [1] the frailty of high dimensional models, and [2] strong linearity assumptions. I may return to the linearity problems later (I am a little less worried about this than Chris Achen seems to be), but I want to focus on dimensionality for a moment.
The "curse of dimensionality" has been the subject of some discussion within social science models -- but the development of more complicated statistical models has continued unabated. The core idea is that finding the maximum of a high dimensional space is hard -- sometimes very hard. In the context of social science models, parameter estimates of high dimensional models may be subject to a great deal of influence or leverage. For example, you may have a large sample overall but have very few Hispanic respondents. The typical strategy of including a dummy variable for Hispanic ethnicity assumes that Hispanic respondent vary only in the intercept (and respond similarly to non-Hispanic respondents in regards to all other variables). The alternative approach (in something akin to a hierarchical model - with ethnicity as a level) is to allow both the intercept and other slopes vary by ethnicity -- but this places remarkable demands on the sample of data. Achen's concern is that statistical models will almost always give us some answer. Relying on variation within a small sub-sample (say, Hispanic respondents in a particular management survey), we will get a coefficient but that coefficient may be unreliable.
Some of this problem is identifiable through careful assessment of leverage diagnostics. If you look at Cook's D values, etc. you can diagnose situations where small sub-samples sizes within your study create fragile coefficients prone to leverage from a small number of observations. Even this becomes difficult with non-continuous independent and dependent, variables though. (but see this paper for an interesting strategy).
Achen argues that we can avoid this situation entirely by more carefully selecting a sample. If we want to look at the behavior of Hispanic administrators, we can select a sample of Hispanic administrators. If we think ethnicity matters but that we don't have enough Hispanic respondents to ensure stable/reliable parameter estimates, we are better off constructing a sample without variation in ethnicity (by omitting Hispanic respondents) and then saying that the sample is homogeneous in terms of ethnicity.
I will return to the subject of sampling as a solution, but I will leave you with two thoughts: [1] Is this approach useful outside of the NES world of tens of thousands of observations from which one can create homogenous sub-samples, [2] will this ghettoize the study of race and ethnic minorities as the "normal" research proceeds to test hypotheses with racially and ethnically homogeneous samples (read "white, male, moderately educated non-southerners").
In the short term, are you concerned that in public management large models (those containing many independent variables) are fragile? Are you intrigued by the strategy of selecting a sample uniform with respect to variables for which you want to control rather than introducing control variables?
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Why I have switched to LaTeX
Last year I switched to using LaTeX as my primary means for writing academic papers - and I have not looked back. Before I provide more information on how to make a similar switch, I want to provide the reasons I have switched and why I won't be switching back :).
1] Professional quality manuscripts -- I got a great piece of advice from the late Larry Terry. When looking at a draft I had prepared he implored me to write the draft as if it were already accepted by the journal. He thought reviewers were more likely to accept manuscripts that looked like manuscripts that were already accepted. While he did not intend this to mean "use LaTeX", he brought my attention to the importance of reviewer reactions to subtle aspects of drafts. He recommended that I refer to "this article" within the manuscript instead of "this manuscript", for example. He was convinced that reviewers treated manuscripts that read like drafts or working papers as just that. While reviewers would be more positively inclined in reviewing manuscripts that look or read like final manuscripts.
When I see a paper prepared in Word, I start from the assumption that it is a draft. No professional publication looks like a Word document. LaTeX produces documents that look like professionally published manuscripts. It is certainly not the case that reviewers in my fields are looking for LaTeX as some sort of gatekeeper (reviewers in my field are largely ignorant of LaTeX altogether) but I do get better reactions with manuscripts that look professionally typeset.
2] Structural composition -- LaTeX forces a writer to consider the outline of his or her manuscript and to write to the plan. I find that this approach to writing forces me to adopt better writing practices. The argument in my manuscript becomes transparent - or, at least, clearer. I see the parts of the paper more easily and can make for a more coherent manuscript. I have long been a compulsive outliner. LaTeX is an approach to document preparation that is consistent with outline-based writing.
Word makes using outlines a little awkward. I ran into tedious problems with the outlining functions and occasional formatting problems associated with detailed outlining in the draft. It looks like newer version of Word are better about this - but it was too little, too late for me.
I still sometimes use Word for shorter documents where such structure is not essential. For articles, though, I feel a little lost without the structure that LaTeX calls for.
3] Extensions -- I have found many, many packages to add to LaTeX that allow me to integrate various types of figures, tables, etc. that make writing manuscripts easier. It goes without saying that LaTeX shines when dealing with mathematical symbols and equations. However, I have also found convenient packages to create figures, GANTT charts, node diagrams, slides, and effective reference management. I may write more about these in the coming weeks - but this has been a pleasant surprise for me in working with LaTeX. To replicate LaTeX's functionality, I would need not only Word but also RefWorks, Visio, Project, and PowerPoint (and possibly still need some Adobe products). Instead, I have consistent syntax across all of these functions within LaTeX.
4] Free -- LaTeX can be used without a commitment to an expensive software package. As a faculty member, I do have access to inexpensive licenses for Word. However, I have run out of the legally allowed licenses given the number of computers in my household. I got around that with a mixture of the Mac and PC licensing - but it made me realize the cost of dependency on an expensive package. I don't want to be one MS policy change away from having to ration my word processing capabilities across my machines. I hear that there has been such a change (allowing one to purchase Windows OR Mac versions of Office -- not both as I did in the past) so this may be an immediate problem for some.
5] Universal output -- I use LaTeX to create PDFs. Anyone can open them. There is no compatibility problem with this or that version of Word. This has been a life-saver for presentations in particular. My PDF-based presentations appear the same regardless of the software used to view them. I don't have to worry about presenting at conferences or other locations for invited presentations where they have an older (or newer, for that matter) version of PowerPoint that shifts objects in my slides around or interferes with the representation of equations. Similarly, I don't have to worry about people not being able to open a document because they have an old version of Word (or no version of Word at all).
Word (and PowerPoint) allow one to print to PDF now, too. I strongly recommend that option for presentations regardless of your choice of software.
6] Cross-platform support -- I will admit, this one is a strange reason. I like LaTeX in that I can move sources files from one platform to another. I can edit them on my old Macbook, my iPad, or any of my Windows machines. I can even use online resources like ScribTeX to host and compile files completely online. This makes LaTeX versatile in the way that Google Docs are -- with a far more flexible set of authoring options. I hear Word is moving towards web-hosting but I don't need to bother since I have an alternative in place already.
-1] OK. I admit that there have been some challenges. The hardest challenges have been related to co-authorship. Only one of my co-authors has ever used LaTeX. I have had to take on the burden of translating revisions. I did not mind this too much given that I LOATHE "track changes" in Word -- but it has created some tension. I don't want to give the impression that the switch has all been peachy. A couple of times (a minority of times, but a significant minority) I have had to convert a paper to Word before submission to a journal. This is also annoying -- but I can deal with it given the advantages I experience. For the most part, though, journals have taken my LaTeX-generated PDFs for review. If they want me to change format after acceptance, I have no complaint. I will convert it to Word Perfect 5.1 if that is what they want for publication. If I were not willing to do this for a publication, I should not be publishing that article in that venue to begin with.
So, please tell me what you think. Do you want to hear more about the features and options of LaTeX or should I just lay off it and stick to statistics software and public management research?
1] Professional quality manuscripts -- I got a great piece of advice from the late Larry Terry. When looking at a draft I had prepared he implored me to write the draft as if it were already accepted by the journal. He thought reviewers were more likely to accept manuscripts that looked like manuscripts that were already accepted. While he did not intend this to mean "use LaTeX", he brought my attention to the importance of reviewer reactions to subtle aspects of drafts. He recommended that I refer to "this article" within the manuscript instead of "this manuscript", for example. He was convinced that reviewers treated manuscripts that read like drafts or working papers as just that. While reviewers would be more positively inclined in reviewing manuscripts that look or read like final manuscripts.
When I see a paper prepared in Word, I start from the assumption that it is a draft. No professional publication looks like a Word document. LaTeX produces documents that look like professionally published manuscripts. It is certainly not the case that reviewers in my fields are looking for LaTeX as some sort of gatekeeper (reviewers in my field are largely ignorant of LaTeX altogether) but I do get better reactions with manuscripts that look professionally typeset.
2] Structural composition -- LaTeX forces a writer to consider the outline of his or her manuscript and to write to the plan. I find that this approach to writing forces me to adopt better writing practices. The argument in my manuscript becomes transparent - or, at least, clearer. I see the parts of the paper more easily and can make for a more coherent manuscript. I have long been a compulsive outliner. LaTeX is an approach to document preparation that is consistent with outline-based writing.
Word makes using outlines a little awkward. I ran into tedious problems with the outlining functions and occasional formatting problems associated with detailed outlining in the draft. It looks like newer version of Word are better about this - but it was too little, too late for me.
I still sometimes use Word for shorter documents where such structure is not essential. For articles, though, I feel a little lost without the structure that LaTeX calls for.
3] Extensions -- I have found many, many packages to add to LaTeX that allow me to integrate various types of figures, tables, etc. that make writing manuscripts easier. It goes without saying that LaTeX shines when dealing with mathematical symbols and equations. However, I have also found convenient packages to create figures, GANTT charts, node diagrams, slides, and effective reference management. I may write more about these in the coming weeks - but this has been a pleasant surprise for me in working with LaTeX. To replicate LaTeX's functionality, I would need not only Word but also RefWorks, Visio, Project, and PowerPoint (and possibly still need some Adobe products). Instead, I have consistent syntax across all of these functions within LaTeX.
4] Free -- LaTeX can be used without a commitment to an expensive software package. As a faculty member, I do have access to inexpensive licenses for Word. However, I have run out of the legally allowed licenses given the number of computers in my household. I got around that with a mixture of the Mac and PC licensing - but it made me realize the cost of dependency on an expensive package. I don't want to be one MS policy change away from having to ration my word processing capabilities across my machines. I hear that there has been such a change (allowing one to purchase Windows OR Mac versions of Office -- not both as I did in the past) so this may be an immediate problem for some.
5] Universal output -- I use LaTeX to create PDFs. Anyone can open them. There is no compatibility problem with this or that version of Word. This has been a life-saver for presentations in particular. My PDF-based presentations appear the same regardless of the software used to view them. I don't have to worry about presenting at conferences or other locations for invited presentations where they have an older (or newer, for that matter) version of PowerPoint that shifts objects in my slides around or interferes with the representation of equations. Similarly, I don't have to worry about people not being able to open a document because they have an old version of Word (or no version of Word at all).
Word (and PowerPoint) allow one to print to PDF now, too. I strongly recommend that option for presentations regardless of your choice of software.
6] Cross-platform support -- I will admit, this one is a strange reason. I like LaTeX in that I can move sources files from one platform to another. I can edit them on my old Macbook, my iPad, or any of my Windows machines. I can even use online resources like ScribTeX to host and compile files completely online. This makes LaTeX versatile in the way that Google Docs are -- with a far more flexible set of authoring options. I hear Word is moving towards web-hosting but I don't need to bother since I have an alternative in place already.
-1] OK. I admit that there have been some challenges. The hardest challenges have been related to co-authorship. Only one of my co-authors has ever used LaTeX. I have had to take on the burden of translating revisions. I did not mind this too much given that I LOATHE "track changes" in Word -- but it has created some tension. I don't want to give the impression that the switch has all been peachy. A couple of times (a minority of times, but a significant minority) I have had to convert a paper to Word before submission to a journal. This is also annoying -- but I can deal with it given the advantages I experience. For the most part, though, journals have taken my LaTeX-generated PDFs for review. If they want me to change format after acceptance, I have no complaint. I will convert it to Word Perfect 5.1 if that is what they want for publication. If I were not willing to do this for a publication, I should not be publishing that article in that venue to begin with.
So, please tell me what you think. Do you want to hear more about the features and options of LaTeX or should I just lay off it and stick to statistics software and public management research?
Sunday, October 16, 2011
A Rule of Three for Public Management Research?
Chris Achen (Princeton) was in College Station last week presenting his provocative argument that political science research needs to focus more on narrowly focused, simple tests and less on elaborate and complicated statistical models. Somewhat hyperbolically, Achen argues that statistical models should contain no more than three independent variables ("A Rule of Three" -- ART). Higher dimensional models, Achen suggests, have a number of problems that leave them prone to supporting frail and unreliable inferences.
As part of the support for this claim, Achen argues that the most important discoveries of political science were derived from nothing more complicated than cross-tabs. Sometimes, he will go so far as to say that nothing of lasting importance has been learned from more complicated statistical models.
I have a great deal of sympathy for this approach and will discuss a few aspects of it over the coming weeks. For now, I just wanted to introduce the basic argument. Do you think that public management research should embrace "a rule of three"?
You can find a central statement of the critique here.
As part of the support for this claim, Achen argues that the most important discoveries of political science were derived from nothing more complicated than cross-tabs. Sometimes, he will go so far as to say that nothing of lasting importance has been learned from more complicated statistical models.
I have a great deal of sympathy for this approach and will discuss a few aspects of it over the coming weeks. For now, I just wanted to introduce the basic argument. Do you think that public management research should embrace "a rule of three"?
You can find a central statement of the critique here.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
New Draft Paper on Public Trust in DHS
We have completed a draft of the next paper using our national opinion survey on issues related to nuclear security and homeland security. You can find it after the jump. Comments, as always, are welcome.
Short Tutorial Resources for R and LaTeX
I am often (OK, that is an exaggeration -- let's say "occasionally") asked by people how they can get started in R or LaTeX. One of the most useful norms surrounding open source software is the expectation that one will simply provide support and tutorials for free. When I find effective tutorials, I will link to them here.
Today I want to make you aware of some superb short videos to help with basic functions in R and LaTeX. Examples range (for R) from data entry to estimation of Poisson models to graphics with ggplot. For LaTeX, examples range from basic document structure to specific tutorials on Beamer (a package to create PP-like slides) and Tikz (a package to allow you to draw a wide range of figures including trees, mind-maps, and traditional XY plots).
To get started with these short videos, check them out at: http://www.youtube.com/user/ramstatvid.
Today I want to make you aware of some superb short videos to help with basic functions in R and LaTeX. Examples range (for R) from data entry to estimation of Poisson models to graphics with ggplot. For LaTeX, examples range from basic document structure to specific tutorials on Beamer (a package to create PP-like slides) and Tikz (a package to allow you to draw a wide range of figures including trees, mind-maps, and traditional XY plots).
To get started with these short videos, check them out at: http://www.youtube.com/user/ramstatvid.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Coming Soon... A New Mission for the Blog
I have decided to change (read, expand) the mission of the blog. I will continue to post my new working papers here. However, I will also increase the frequency with which I post information on new resources (particularly related to STATA, R, LaTeX, etc.) and opine on issues related to public management research. I will also include posts related to job ads for public management students -- particularly those interested in emergency management, homeland security, and nonprofit management. Watch this space!
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Link to the Partner Choice Paper
Here is the link for the Partner Choice paper appearing in Risk, Hazards, Crisis and Public Policy.
http://www.psocommons.org/rhcpp/vol2/iss2/art4/
http://www.psocommons.org/rhcpp/vol2/iss2/art4/
Saturday, June 4, 2011
The Blog Starts to Pay Off... Sorta
I am happy to announce that I have had one of the papers posted on the blog (Partner Choice) accepted for publication in the journal Risk, Hazard, Crisis and Public Policy. This is the first validation of my new writing process. Hopefully it will be the first of many papers appearing here before publication.
PMRC Evolution of EM Networks Paper
I am about to present this paper at the PMRA meeting in Syracuse, NY. This paper builds on an earlier paper on the evolution of EM networks -- though we have added a second community and a second network data collection approach. The results are interesting substantively (in terms of the diversity and transience of membership of actors in each network) and methodologically (in terms of the comparison of the two data collection techniques.
The link to the paper is after the jump.
The link to the paper is after the jump.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Revised ASPA Paper on Shelter Management and Disability
This is the revised version of our ASPA presentation. I am still quite uncomfortable working in such informal terms - but I need to communicate to a broad audience.
Friday, May 6, 2011
New Paper on Public Opinion and the Department of Homeland Security
This is the first in what I hope to be a series of papers on public opinion of the Department of Homeland Security. It was just published in the Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
This is just some basic bivariate tests -- but the full regression models are coming soon. I intend to post working papers here (if I can clear that with my co-authors).
You can find the paper at: http://www.bepress.com/jhsem/vol8/iss1/21/
This is just some basic bivariate tests -- but the full regression models are coming soon. I intend to post working papers here (if I can clear that with my co-authors).
You can find the paper at: http://www.bepress.com/jhsem/vol8/iss1/21/
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Evidence-based Public Management
I am not entirely happy with this draft - but it is better to put it out there and see if there is any reaction. I will be presenting the paper at the Western Political Science Association meeting in San Antonio next week.
Monday, January 10, 2011
New draft paper on school districts and emergency management consultation
I am back on track to get some writing done. Here is the first of a few papers I hope to get up as working papers in the coming weeks. This one deals with the propensity of school districts to consult with emergency management professionals.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
It's been awhile - but I am back and will start with a tool recommendation
I have neglected my blog in large part due to my recent focus on some collaborative work. In my "quiet" period I have completed a couple of co-authored pieces that I was not comfortable posting on my personal blog (I will clear it with co-authors in the future), had a methods textbook proposal accepted, completed a textbook chapter for a homeland security textbook, and completed three NSF proposals -- one of which was apparently so bad it was rejected twice in one review cycle :).
I am back to writing some single authored pieces and will be posting working papers soon. Hopefully I will be able to better balance original research writing (for the blog) with my textbook writing and a couple of upcoming grant proposals.
In the mean time, I have a great tool to recommend. Google-Refine. I am working on a project for the local Ag extension office that includes 72000 referrals of case management clients to various organizations for services following Hurricane Ike. The data are fascinating. The dataset consists of referral level data that includes which specific clients were referred to which specific agencies by which specific case manager. The networking data potential is astounding. However, the data are PROFOUNDLY DIRTY. Google-refine is a great tool to help clean large datasets like this. Anyone interested in tools to facilitate cleaning datasets should give it a look.
The tool also helped me aggregate the data for quick analysis. In my case, I aggregated up from the referral-level data to case manager level data to compare referral strategies across case managers from different organizations. Given the nature of the data, this was not possible using STATA's "collapse" command or any other tool I could find. Google-refine's faceting tools made it simple. I recommend giving it a look.
Keep checking in. I expect to have an actual research working paper up within a week or so.
I am back to writing some single authored pieces and will be posting working papers soon. Hopefully I will be able to better balance original research writing (for the blog) with my textbook writing and a couple of upcoming grant proposals.
In the mean time, I have a great tool to recommend. Google-Refine. I am working on a project for the local Ag extension office that includes 72000 referrals of case management clients to various organizations for services following Hurricane Ike. The data are fascinating. The dataset consists of referral level data that includes which specific clients were referred to which specific agencies by which specific case manager. The networking data potential is astounding. However, the data are PROFOUNDLY DIRTY. Google-refine is a great tool to help clean large datasets like this. Anyone interested in tools to facilitate cleaning datasets should give it a look.
The tool also helped me aggregate the data for quick analysis. In my case, I aggregated up from the referral-level data to case manager level data to compare referral strategies across case managers from different organizations. Given the nature of the data, this was not possible using STATA's "collapse" command or any other tool I could find. Google-refine's faceting tools made it simple. I recommend giving it a look.
Keep checking in. I expect to have an actual research working paper up within a week or so.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)