| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 31 |
Authors' Committee
Chair:
Andy Eggers (Gov)
Members:
Weihua An (Soc)Kevin Bartz (Stats)
Sebastian Bauhoff (HealthPol)
John Graves (HealthPol)
Justin Grimmer (Gov)
Jens Hainmueller (Gov)
Mike Kellermann (Gov)
Ellie Powell (Gov)
Gary King (Gov)
Weekly Research Workshop Sponsors
Alberto Abadie, Lee Fleming, Adam Glynn, Guido Imbens, Gary King, Kevin Quinn, Jamie Robins, Don Rubin, Chris Winship
Recent Comments
- Re: More on statistics and the death penalty
By: Andrew C. Thomas
Recent Entries
- Gans and Leigh on the "Baby Bump"
- Exxon-tainted research?
- Awards for IQSS faculty
- The Tree-Friendly Academic, Part II: The Editing Process, and Getting Off the Monitor
- The Tree-Friendly Academic: Whither A Useful Free PDF Editor?
- Nicholas and James are Featured in the NYT again
- Matching Portfolios
- Harvard Program on Survey Research (on Youtube)
- Placebo effects and the probability of assignment to active treatment
- IN, NC Rehash; WV Prediction
Categories
Blogroll
Brad DeLongCognitive Daily
Complexity & Social Networks
Developing Intelligence
EconLog
The Education Wonks
Empirical Legal Studies
Free Exchange
Freakonomics
Health Care Economist
Junk Charts
Language Log
Law & Econ Prof Blog
Machine Learning (Theory)
Marginal Revolution
Mixing Memory
Mystery Pollster
New Economist
Political Arithmetik
Political Science Methods
Pure Pedantry
Science & Law Blog
Simon Jackman
Social Science++
Statistical modeling, causal inference, and social science
Archives
- August 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
Notification
« Social science and popular culture | Main | A case for the case-control method »
19 November 2007
More on statistics and the death penalty
There was a good non-technical article by Adam Liptak in the New York Times this weekend reviewing the renewed debate about the supposed deterrent effect of capital punishment (The web version of the article linked to seven different academic articles; many thanks to the editorial staff). I've blogged about this before (here) and tend to agree with those who say that there just isn't enough information in the data. In that context, I particularly liked the quote from Justin Wolfers at the end of the article:
Professor Wolfers said the answer to the question of whether the death penalty deterred was “not unknowable in the abstract,” given enough data.“If I was allowed 1,000 executions and 1,000 exonerations, and I was allowed to do it in a random, focused way,” he said, “I could probably give you an answer.”
Personally, I'd rather randomly allocate 1,000 electoral systems than 1,000 executions, but the point is well-taken.
Posted by Mike Kellermann at November 19, 2007 8:20 AM
Comments
I was going to mock the use of the word "sophisticated" combined with "multiple regression analysis" to satisfy my inner language snob here, but given the focus of the article toward the non-quantitative, big words like this do sell the point that it's a deceptively difficult technique to do right. And other than matching and experiments (which would be hysterical in both senses of the word), what else do we have?
Posted by: Andrew C. Thomas at November 19, 2007 2:26 PM