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From sketch to graphic

I just ran across chartsnthings (h/t to Gelman). Kevin Quealy at the New York Times graphics department shows the progression from initial sketch to final graphic.

Thoughts:

1) I love seeing other people's first sketches. I sketch first too, and I find that the quality of any graphic can mostly be determined by how good the idea was when I first sketched it.

2) This reminded me that rather than using R to make my final figures, I really need run them through...

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App Stats: Elwert on "Endogenous Selection"

We hope you can join us this Wednesday, April 25, 2012 for the final session of the Applied Statistics Workshop this semester. Felix Elwert, Assistant Professor from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will give a presentation entitled "Endogenous Selection". A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at 12.15.

"Endogenous Selection"
Felix Elwert
...

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App Stats: Wasow on "Violence and Voting: Did the 1960s Urban Riots Reshape American Politics?"

We hope you can join us this Wednesday, April 18, 2012 for the Applied Statistics Workshop. Omar Wasow, a Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Government and the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, will give a presentation entitled "Violence and Voting: Did the 1960s Urban Riots Reshape American Politics?" A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at...

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App Stats: Glynn on "Using Post-Treatment Variables to Establish Upper Bounds on Causal Effects: Assessing Executive Selection Procedures in New Democracies"

We hope you can join us this Wednesday, April 11, 2012 for the Applied Statistics Workshop. Adam Glynn, Associate Professor from the Department of Government at Harvard University, will give a presentation entitled "Using Post-Treatment Variables to Establish Upper Bounds on Causal Effects: Assessing Executive Selection Procedures in New Democracies". A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at 12.15.

"Using Post-...

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App Stats: Bahar on "International Knowledge Diffusion and the Comparative Advantage of Nations"

We hope you can join us this Wednesday, April 4, 2012 for the Applied Statistics Workshop. Dany Bahar, a Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, will give a presentation entitled "International Knowledge Diffusion and the Comparative Advantage of Nations". A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at 12.15.

"International Knowledge Diffusion and the Comparative Advantage...

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App Stats: Yamamoto on "A Multinomial Response Model for Varying Choice Sets, with Application to Partially Contested Multiparty Elections"

We hope you can join us this Wednesday, March 28, 2012 for the Applied Statistics Workshop. Teppei Yamamoto, Assistant Professor from the Department of Political Science at MIT, will give a presentation entitled "A Multinomial Response Model for Varying Choice Sets, with Application to Partially Contested Multiparty Elections". A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at 12.15.

"A Multinomial Response Model for Varying...

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App Stats: Reshef on "Detecting Novel Bivariate Associations in Large Data Sets"

We hope you can join us this Wednesday, March 21, 2012 for the Applied Statistics Workshop. David Reshef, an MD/PhD student at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), will give a presentation entitled "Detecting Novel Bivariate Associations in Large Data Sets". A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at 12.15.

"Detecting Novel Bivariate Associations in Large...

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Rainfall: not such a great instrument after all...

Every discovery of a plausible instrumental variable sparks a cottage industry of papers all using the same instrument to ask different questions. A working paper by Heather Sarsons, titled "Rainfall and Conflict" calls one of these cottage industries into serious question. From the abstract:

Starting with Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti (2004), a large literature has used rainfall variation as an instrument to study the impacts of income shocks on civil war and conflict. These studies argue...
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App Stats: Goodman on "Flaking Out: Snowfall, Disruptions of Instructional Time, and Student Achievement"

We hope you can join us this Wednesday, March 7, 2012 for the Applied Statistics Workshop. Joshua Goodman, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, will give a presentation entitled "Flaking Out: Snowfall, Disruptions of Instructional Time, and Student Achievement". A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at 12.15.

"Flaking Out: Snowfall, Disruptions of Instructional Time, and...

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App Stats: Pfister on "Visual Computing in Biology"

We hope you can join us this Wednesday, February 29, 2012 for the Applied Statistics Workshop. Hanspeter Pfister, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, will give a presentation entitled "Visual Computing in Biology". A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at 12.15.

"Visual Computing in Biology"
Hanspeter Pfister
School of...

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